The Craft

The Craft is decidedly aimed at a young, perhaps even a teenage, audience with its spooky but not humourless story about four teenage girls' supernatural powers.

Sarah moves to L.A. with her parents and starts at a new school, where she quickly makes friends with three outsider girls, as the reception from the rest of the class is, to put it mildly, a little lukewarm. The four girls' companionship is about more than friendship, however, for Sarah is the newcomer who can fill the empty place in their circle. Once they can each summon one of the corners of the earth in conjuring up nature's secret powers, they gain great power. For the girls are witches! They use their power to overcome some of the obstacles in their everyday lives. For example, Sarah bewitches the school's emotionally cold pick-up artist so that he falls madly in love with her; Bonnie's disfiguring burn scars disappear, and Rochelle gets revenge on a racist blonde. Nancy, who is seething with pent-up hatred, uses her powers less innocently, with murder as the result. That makes Sarah say no, but an apostate witch is not allowed to leave the cult unpunished. She must die!

The Craft takes its subject seriously and delivers an exciting story, but there is something TV-like about the film that means I would feel cheated if I had spent the price of a cinema ticket on it. The girls act well and cannot help the roles being so sharply drawn. Robin Tunney has been typecast as the cute, good-hearted blonde, while the dark Fairuza Balk oozes evil.