Hi, my name is Jonathan Denard McNeair and I grew up in Lexington, North Carolina, also known as Pig City...Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha...The town is mostly known for its barbeque where they often throw barbeque festivals every October. In my chosen career, I am a self-published author of fiction.
It has now come to this. They finally went through with a Craft Reboot of sorts. Well, it's not really a reboot, it's more of a spiritual sequel in a way. It's hard to explain.
So, the trailer starts off with the main character, moving into a new town to live with her mom's new boyfriend and three sons. It's very identical to the original where Sarah moves to Los Angeles at the start of the movie.
How the main character meets the three girls is actually through an embarrassing experience. The scene implies that she has her period in front of a classroom of students. Everyone is laughing except the three main girls, identifying as our coven in the movie. Right off the bat, they accept her, showing a surprising amount of empathy. Okay, that's one thing I do like about the trailer. It's comparable to the cold reception Nancy and the three girls in the original film give to Sarah when she first meets them but I guess that's supposed to demonstrate their sudden betrayal in the climax.
As the trailer continues, they give the girl a ceremonial bath, christening her as their fourth. This suddenly enhances their magic, the main character being the most powerful of them all. But with great power comes with great irresponsibility as the main character's thirst for dominance becomes too hard to handle.
Okay, at least I do see that they do things differently this time. When I heard the announcement that Blumhouse was going to remake The Craft, I cringed. Okay, I would say they did an okay job with the Halloween Reboot, not the best but way better than the sequels and the Rob Zombie remakes. But this is also the same studio who made the second Black Christmas Remake, which I have not heard good things about. I really wasn't looking forward to it. I always felt that the Craft worked well on its own, particularly in the time period it was set in. It's one of those lightning-in-the-bottle types of movies that didn't need sequels or remakes. Is it perfect? No, but it's still entertaining with a charming cast of female leads.
But in this day in age, we are getting an influx of year-gap sequels and reboots. So due to the cult following of the 1996 film, a second movie was in the works.
The first thing I noticed was that David Duchovny, of all people, was in the movie....as the dad character, no less. We also have Michelle Monaghan, who I haven't seen in a while, as the main character's mom. I don't know if their roles are significant or not, but we'll see.
The main girl is sort of a mix of Sarah and Nancy. One clue is that she is the new girl in town, starting off shy and repressed. But as the trailer progresses, she gets more powerful and becomes a bit arrogant. She even recites one of Nancy's classic lines. Yeah, let me talk about that. That was one thing about the trailer that threw me off, which makes me think that this is a sequel disguised as a remake.
They somehow include a photo of Nancy in the trailer (which doesn't look real by the way) but it never entirely explains how much of importance she has in the story. Is she related to one of the characters? Is she a distant cousin of the main girl? I'm scratching my head here. In my opinion, I wish they would've left this out to be a surprise in the movie. This is what annoys me about these trailers because they want to constantly shove in easter eggs to remind the audience of the original film. The callbacks just makes the sequel seem like a cash grab and that's a shame. In the first few seconds of the trailer, I was actually invested in what new ideas that would bring into this movie.
For instance, we have the coven leader played by Lovie Simone. The difference between her and Nancy is that she actually comes off as caring and intentive. She also guides the girls with full knowledge of the craft, kind of like the character of Lirio. She could be put into a position where warns the main girl not to take advantage of her powers.
But as soon as the main girl gets corrupted, the coven leader must do what she can to stop her wrath. That would be an interesting enough twist. If the trailer just left it like that, I would be singing a different tune right now. I'm not sure how the other two girls would be portrayed in the movie but let's hope they have more development than how Bonnie and Rochelle were handled, in which by the end of the 1996 film, they are no more than cackling minions to Nancy.
Though my question is: are the four main leads believable as outcasts? I"m sort of in the middle with this one.
While the girls in the original movie were beautiful, they were also believable as outcasts but with this version, the girls look a bit...polished. And that's what I was afraid of. That this version would strip away any edge the original had.
As demonstrated in this photo here, the girls look like they're posing in a photo shoot for Seventeen magazine. Maybe the performances will tell otherwise, but again, they look a little too prim and proper by comparison.
So now I am down to my final thoughts. Will I watch this? Maybe, but not right now. It's not the type of movie that I will go rush to see. If something like this was done a couple of years earlier, I might. But since there are so many of these year-gap sequels, I might have to sit and wait for this one.
