The Craft

Alternate titles : None

Tagline : "Welcome to the Witching Hour"

Damn-it, don't you just LOVE foxy Goth witches? In this Robin Tunney plays new girl Sarah Bailey, who's having difficulty fitting in at her new high school. Shunned by the popular kids, she's soon befriended by a small group of misfits, lead by Nancy (Fairuza Baulk) and her friends Rochelle (Rachael True) and Bonnie (as played a pre-Scream Neve Campbell).

But as she is soon to discover, there's more to this group of Goths than just dark eye shadow and black fingernails. Seems these 3 are heavily into the dark arts, ie witchcraft and the occult, and it isn't too long before they're getting her involved with their bizarre rituals, involving spells and incantations.

As they get deeper and deeper involved with their practices, they begin to notice their spells starting to work. At first they're thrilled, and begin using their new powers to get back at the other kids for giving them a hard time. But when one of their classmates is accidentally killed, Sarah realises they have finally gone to far. But can she convince the others to stop using thei powers?

This is a highly enjoyable supernatural teen horror pic, which is made all the more enjoyable by the foxy Fairuza Baulk and the ever lovely Neve Campbell as Gothic looking schoolgirl witches. Hell, what more could you want from a decent film?.

Overall Marks : 7/10.

Terrifying Trivia

• Alternate tag line "Spend the weekend with the girls", "Exorcise Your Rites", "Relax....It's only magic....".
• Robin Tunney's hair was actually a wig as her real hair was still growing back after shaving her head for the film "Empire Records".
• The films budget was $15,000,000.
• Though playing teenagers, all of the actresses were in fact well into their 20's. Most notably Rachael True, who actually turned 30 during production.
• Fairuza Baulk was offered the role of Nancy because she had an active interest in, and already knew a lot about, witchcraft and the occult.
• Skeet Ulrich, who plays Chris, went on to star with Neve Campbell in Scream.
• The filmmakers were trying to get a PG-13 rating from the US ratings board. But despite following all of their guidelines during production, they still ended up with an R-rating as they didn't like the idea of teenage girls using witchcraft.
• If you watch closely, you'll notice the girls skirts get shorter as their powers get stronger over the course of the film.
• For Sarah's nightmare, over 2700 snakes were used to film that one scene.
• Whilst trying to film the invocation scene on the beach, the filmmakers were plagued with bizarre occurrences during each take, resulting in multiple retakes to try and complete the scene. The first time a flock of bats started circling the set and the waves suddenly rose up and swamped them, extinguishing the candles they were using. The second time, at around the same point, the generator mysteriously failed and they lost power. According to the director, every time they set the scene up, everything was fine, but as soon as the actresses had to speak their lines, trying to invoke the deity of Manon (a fictional name), the tide suddenly turned rough and waves started lapping up the beach. Fortunately, they did eventually manage to complete the scene.

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