HalloWatch: The Craft (1996)

Watched:  10/27/2023

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Andrew Fleming

One thing I very much recall from the 1990's - perhaps a product of the era or just the age I was at the time (I would have been 21 seeing this movie) - was that there was what was going on, and then there was the LA regurgitation of what was happening.  The LA version was invariably stripped of the spirit of the source, and churned out product for a mass-market and to have a fast-fashion version.*  Often, folks didn't necessarily get the nuance or difference.  It's why mall-store  "Hot Topic" is absolutely hilarious to Gen X'ers of a certain stripe, and earnestly beloved by Millennials of a similar stripe. 

I think there's a whole book to be written on how anything and everything was co-opted and commercialized to the masses, stripped of its origins and meaning, and basically is now considered the Poochie-fication of mass media and product marketing. 

The Craft (1996) Poochifies the era and it's attempts to capitalize on multiple threads, from the exploding alt-rock scene, and the easy access to, and interest in, occult material - the inevitable result of being raised at the height of the Satanic Panic.  It's also *very* much a 1990's teen movie, replete with sex, drugs and rock and roll.

But, to its credit, the movie never winks at the fact that its leads are teenagers, or girls.  And that fact, alone, might be why the movie was loved upon its release, and continues to have (and build) a following.

However, if you want to get your skeptic's eye up, the telltale sign of the "trust us, the Sony Corporation is very on the side of the rebelling youth!" can be found in the soundtrack, comprised of covers of good songs by mediocre bands.  Literally no one was hoping for Our Lady Peace to cover the Beatles' Tomorrow Never Knows, but this movie shoves it front and center in equal parts 'tude setting and commercial synergy.

So it is that a young woman with innate magical powers moves to LA from San Francisco (it is suggest SF is not cool, which is mind-boggling for the era), and falls in with three girls who are absolute criminals and, also, would-be witches.  We are told one of them is supposed to be hideous because of some burn scars we see for two seconds, and otherwise is Neve Campbell, and so the movie is a liar.  One (Fairuza Balk) is supposedly thought of as untouchable and a "slut" with scant evidence - mostly she just seems like the kind of girl who would take your question about the night's assignment as you trying to get one over on her and yell at you.**  And one girl is weird because she's Black in a film 99% otherwise starring white people in the 90's.  

This is from the era where movies showed kids routinely saying and doing things in class that would clearly get them punted, especially from private school.  It's just dumb, lazy filmmaking.  Or else everyone involved went to schools with teachers who were complete pushovers.  "Attitude" was a strange alchemy marketers sought and tried to promote, but most of them didn't know the difference between a cool, detached attitude and just being an asshole, and there's probably a book about 90s' media that could be written there, as well.  

As with most teen media of the time - perhaps reflecting a reality for many of the generation - parents are a non-factor.  Gen-X kids were not depending on their folks' for rides.  We did not have cell phones for them to track, check-in, or for us to communicate.  When we were gone, we were gone.  And our parents only mildly cared so long as we checked in when we said we would.  

The witches - before and after tapping into powers of the Elder Gods - are the kind of cheeky asshole that tilted the wrong direction at the time.  They're made to seem more tolerable by the impossibly dickish kids in the hall (Breckin Meyer! Skeet Ulrich!) and the thing movies do where they actually play out what kids think is happening in their heads, but which rarely actually manifests.

It's not a terrible movie.  It's also not particularly good.  The lead, Robin Tunney, is dull as dishwater, suggesting what was to come with the "if I'm kinda awkward stare into space, I'm deep" take that would cement Kristen Stewart's career.  Neve Campbell, who is straight up a good actor, is clearly given bad direction or edited to death.  We keep being told she's acting certain ways, but she... doesn't.  She barely speaks in the film.  Rachel True is clearly a solid actor, and I kind of feel for her having to carry the racist storyline and then being asked to feel bad for her tormentor.  

Fairuza Balk was kind of the break out from this movie (Campbell already had Party of Five and Scream was happening around this time).  I remember a brief window where she was going to be the hot new thing, and she did wind up with some solid roles immediately following, but by the early 00's, she had faded into the background.  Here, I think she's the most interesting actor and has the best role.  

The movie doesn't seem particularly interested in learning much about the characters beyond what Skeet Ulrich's character tells us as Johnny Exposition at the film's start.  It doesn't ever delve into the depression and suicide attempt loudly announced at the film's outset, and uses it as a prop for a later part of the movie.  It doesn't seem to want to tell us much about magic, who the Elder God is that is the force for the back 1/3rd of the movie.  It just sorta clicks along, and predicts the plot of Mean Girls a few years before that movie would show up.  But with more snakes and roaches.  

And, btw, the description of magic is basically a "find and replace" of Yoda's description of The Force in Empire.  

Anyway, it's fine.  I'm not sure it's a classic, but it's managed to survive well beyond what I would have expected.  It's only scary as any other movie about your high school pals turning on you, but it's excellent fodder for maybe a longer form thing.  I'd be curious to see what this looks like over 13 episodes or so.

There was a 2020 sequel which included the participation of Fairuza Balk, likely buried by accident during the height of the pandemic.  Anyway - it's out there for me to watch one day, I guess.

*There's also the reverse where someone tried too hard to make something mainstream that shouldn't have been, from Iggy Pop to using indie comic art on OK Soda cans

**I don't remember anyone in HS ever really having this reputation.  I don't think "she slept with one guy" would be an argument to sway an entire student body