The Craft [1996]

With a plot irresistibly reminiscent of 1970s TV movies like Satan's School for Girls and Midnight Offerings, this breezy, MTV era horror movie boils down to Heathers with black magic. Misfit new girl in school Sarah [Robin Tunney] falls in with three other geek girls - white trash Nancy [Fairuza Balk], burn victim Bonnie [Neve Campbell] and notionally black Rochelle [Rachel True] - and completes their coven.
Tapping into elemental powers, they first clean up their own lives and take petty revenge on their tormentors, but then things go bad when Nancy decides to become Mistress of the Universe and does her best to make things rough on the conscience-stricken Sarah.

Fairuza Balk, still best remembered as Dorothy of Oz but turning into a fine young adult character actress, gives a performance worthy of a better film as the school slut who, by degrees, discovers her powers and loses her soul. However, it's hard to stay patient with the goody-goody heroine and her whining, and this is still one of those teen movies that requires you to believe drop-dead gorgeous actresses are the school misfits. It's a competent, by-the-numbers horror movie which unleashes the usual rain of creepy-crawlies in the finale, but it hints occasionally that, with a smarter screenwriter, it could have been a real gem. Slick, professional and forgettable, this is notably not called The Art.
KIM NEWMAN

First Published In: Q [issue unknown]

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