SPOILERS! You've been warned.
Rated 14a
Last seen: May 2004
The Craft (1996)
Robin Tunney, Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell
Directed by: Andrew Fleming
CAMPY HORROR LIST
CHARACTERS
Sarah Bailey - Our herione. She's so school girl looking. A damaged new girl with witch powers.
Nancy Downs - A weird gothic white trash chick. Also a witch.
Bonnie - A witch with a whole bunch of scars all over her back.
Rochelle - A witch who has to face prejudice from Lizzie.
Chris Hooker - popular jock type. Jerk extradonaire. Sarah likes him. Falls out of a window.
Laura Lizzie - Total racist bitch.
Lirio - Witch at the local witch shop. She helps Sarah..or at least, tries to.
PLOT
After Sarah attempts suicide, her and step-mother rush her over to somewhere in California to attend a Catholic High School. When Sarah is unpacking the first day there, she has a strange encounter. A homeless man comes brandishing a snake to give her. Strangest thing ever. Sarah hates snakes apparently. We then learn that Sarah's real mother died while giving birth to her. Remember that, it bears signifcance later.
At her Catholic high school, Sarah is not fitting in very well. She gets teased by some boys in French for being able to speak the language (what the hell?). Bonnie observes her turning a pencil with her mind during class.
At the point, I'd like to explain about the witches...well, witch wanna-be's anyway. They have three members, and they need four to complete their circle and gain powers. Lucky for them, Sarah seems to harbour some sort of pencil turning power. The current members of the Circle are Nancy, Bonnie and Rochelle. For some reason, Nancy is mean to her when Sarah tries to befriend them. But her day picks up, because Chris, who is both good-looking and popular flirts with her. She hangs out with Nancy, Bonnie and Rochelle when they later apologize to her. They ask about her witch powers and it's revieled that Sarah is a natural witch. They go to the local witch shop and steal and bunch of stuff. In the city on the way back, Sarah is accosted with that creepy homeless guy. They all manage to use their minds to make a truck hit him. They run off, all in glee. Nancy explains the concept of Manon. As she so clearly states it:"If God and the Devil were playing football, Manon would be the stadium that they play on." Whatever. I don't know what it means. That's not the point though. The point is that he's some sort of energy God. Sarah gets freaked out when she hears that Manon has the power to take everything bad that has happened in a life and make it good. Later on in the evening Sarah goes out with him, she lets him have one kiss. He gets greedy though and invites her back to his place. When she politely declines, he feels emasculated and the next day at school, he spreads rumors that she slept with him. He also pretends that he doesn't like her...or he actually doesn't like her. You get the idea anyway.
Poor Sarah. In her depressed induced state, she meets up with Bonnie, Nancy and Rochelle. They begin hanging out on a regular basis, doing all the witchcraft. During school one day, they invite Sarah to come with them. They go out into the woods and make themselves into a full Circle. As a result, they each get to make a wish. Sarah wishes that Chris would like her. Bonnie wishes that her scars will go away and Rochelle wishes that Laura's prejudice would stop. Later on at school, Chris starts acting all freaky obsessed with Sarah. Laura's hair starts to fall out and later in the week, Bonnie's scars get removed. The only one whose wish is not coming true is Nancy. She plenty pished about it alright. She has to come home to a shitty trailer home where her mom is smashed and her step-dad is a pig and all they do is yell at each other. Nancy need not worry, because later on, she manages to give her step-dad a heart-attack, magically. She and her mother inherit a large sum of money and move into an apartment and get all kinds of nice stuff. Sarah shows them a spell in which you can change your appearance.
Chris's obsession with Sarah starts to get a little creepy. The next time the Circle travels to the local witch shop Sarah asks Lirio how to undo a love spell. Lirio says that everything you send out comes back three-fold and she must wait for the spell to run its course. Nancy finds a book that teaches them about some sort of power energy spell. It's a big deal. They head out and cast the spell. It works and gives them great power. They also end up washing a lot of sharks onto the beach. At the time, Nancy starts to go crazy.
After she starts feeling upset, Sarah calls up Chris and they arrange a meeting. Chris confesses his insane mad love for her and tries to rape her. Sarah manages to escape and run to Rochelle's house where Nancy and Bonnie are. Nancy decides to go to the party. She encounters Chris and decides to disguise herself as Sarah using that disguising spell so that he will have sex with her. It works and when they are in the act, the real Sarah opens the door. Chris realizes that it's Nancy whom he's fucking. He accuses her of being jealous, which makes Nancy use her power to throw Chris out of a window.
Sarah tries to do a binding spell on Nancy, which leads the three witches to turn against her. They start showing up in her dreams and confronting her in the bathroom. In the end, they begin chasing her. She tries to get help for Lirio, but gets frightened and runs away. Back at her home, the three rogue witches are in wait. They make it seem as if her dad and step-mother have died thinking that she ran away. Then they write a fake suicide letter that states that Sarah killed Chris and use their power to slit her wrists. Before this happened, her kitchen was full of maggots and rats, and there were snakes all around. She manages not to die by channeling the power of Manon through her dead mother. It's payback time.
She makes spells that make Bonnie and Rochelle run away. Bonnie looks in the mirror and sees that all her scars have returned to her face. Rochelle looks and sees the all her hair is falling out. They run away leaving Nancy there who thinks she can overpower Sarah alone. After some nifty trickery, she makes Nancy go insane.
The end of the movie shows Bonnie and Rochelle coming up to Sarah some time later. Sarah is still hostile. When Bonnie and Rochelle ask Sarah if she still has power, because they don't, she doesn't answer. They go off scoffing that she doesn't have any power left. Just then, Sarah makes a mini-storm occurs and a branch almost crushes them. She tells them that they don't want to end up like Nancy. The shot switches to Nancy, who is now in an institution, chained down to the bed. Very effective.
FAVORITE SCENE
The anomily of animals at Sarah's house.
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