The Craft: Legacy movie reviews for Zoe Lister-Jones’ re-imagining of the cult 90s hit say it fails to recreate the magic of the original. Lister-Jones, who wrote and directed the movie, assembled a diverse cast for The Craft: Legacy, which is both a sequel that loosely connects to the original, as well as a soft reboot featuring many of the same plot points as 1996’s The Craft. It stars Cailee Spaeny as Lily, the new girl in town this time around, who joins Tabby (Lovie Simone), Frankie (Gideon Adlon) and Lourdes (Zoey Luna) in a coven of teen witches.
Given the legacy of the original, which failed to light up the box office, but has endured as a cult hit on DVD and streaming, anticipation for Lister-Jones’ movie has been high, even though it received a PG-13 rating, as opposed to the R the original got. Early reports from the filmmakers revealed that it would tackle many of the same themes as the 1996 movie, including peer pressure, bullying, racism, and self-esteem, as well as a number of new themes relevant to the current cultural climate.
Reviews for the horror thriller were dropped Tuesday night ahead of the movie’s Wednesday debut on VOD, with most reviewers saying that it is a poor copy of the original, while lamenting its lack of movie magic. You can read through spoiler-free excerpts below to see what the critics are saying about The Craft: Legacy. For more, click on the corresponding links to check out the reviews in full.
Molly Freeman, Screen Rant
The Craft: Legacy clearly has plenty to say about women and power and the men who would take it away from them, as well as a message about men who don’t fit the strict ideal of masculinity still being valid and worthy, but those themes are not clearly nor fully explored enough for Lister-Jones’ movie to have the full effect it’s aiming for.
James White, Empire Magazine
Looking to cast a spell of its own, The Craft: Legacy tries some new tricks. It’s just a shame that for all the worthwhile additions, it’s sometimes more toil than bubble.
Mary Sollosi, EW
For all its good intentions, the glossy production comes off like a feature-length episode of a network teen drama; nary a frame hints at the arresting energy of the edgy sleepover staple.
David Rooney, THR
There are few if any scares here, right up to the anticlimactic final face-off where the witches strike back not so much with incantations but with what seem more like wannabe superhero moves. They’re more low-key X-Men than Hex-Men.
Peter Debruge, Variety
Blumhouse’s The Craft: Legacy comes across as The Craft: Lite, a watered-down, PG-13 reboot in which the outsiders are no longer treated as freaks, and their mission amounts to enlightening Neanderthal classmates and other assorted chauvinists about the risks of underestimating young women.
Matt Goldberg, Collider
Despite a strong cast and a well-intentioned message about feminine power and unity, clumsy plotting and weak character development undermine The Craft: Legacy.
Kristen Yoonsoo Kim, New York Times
A disappointing distillation of the original that’s mostly devoid of personality. Avoiding the bad apple story line that Fairuza Balk’s Nancy so brilliantly embodied in the ’90s version, this new “Craft” makes toxic masculinity the girls’ greatest enemy (the misogynistic bully falls under a spell that makes him say things like “womxn”). But even that modernization feels predictable.
Cheryl Eddy, Gizmodo
There’s nothing here that replicates the chaotic energy of the first film’s Nancy Downs—no shoplifting in the pagan boutique, no beachside rituals held during lightning storms, no cruel “glamour” hallucinations, nobody flying around screaming their head off. We barely get to know the other girls because everything is so focused on Lily, and all things considered the stakes feel relatively low.
Benjamin Lee, The Guardian
What truly drags the film down though is the damp finale, which turns them from heroes to superheroes, the plot falling in line with a structure done to death within the last decade, smoothing down the edges of the story into a familiar, and unexciting showdown, of superpowers.
Alonso Duralde, The Wrap
This new chapter, under the guidance of writer-director Zoe Lister-Jones (“Band Aid”), revels in a quartet of outcasts discovering their capabilities, and it gives them an outside force to battle, so that they have something to do with their spells besides get revenge on the mean girls.
Aside from Duralde’s effusive review, most critics agree that The Craft: Legacy manages to disappoint by not setting up its villain properly, and by resorting to a formulaic and uninspired third act. Unfortunately for fans of the original who were excited for this reboot, it seems like Lister-Jones hasn’t managed to craft a worthy successor to that movie, with the potential power of the story blunted by its finale.
The one bright point here is that critics didn’t like The Craft either, missing out on its appeal to young women at the time, and so the case might be the same here, with teenage girls once again finding heroes to look up to with The Craft: Legacy. But based on reviews alone, though, it seems like another disappointing sequel/reboot that squanders the potential, and fan base, of the original.
Key Release Dates
The Craft
Release Date:1996-05-03
