Hard Candy (2005)

 

What if...? is the central question to any writer. First you write what you know, then you ask 'what if...?'. I never thought a seriously thrilling psychological movie would - at least in my mind - spawn from an episode of To Catch A Predator. It is difficult to make a movie with a moral or societal message that doesn't come off as biased or preachy, and given today's climate, it is probably suitable that a movie like Hard Candy was made in the mid-'00s, just on the precipice of artistic expansion, mere years before the populace apparently became too precious to take a joke, or to acknowledge genuine social commentary when it presents itself. I cannot imagine a movie like Hard Candy being made either today, or even five years ago. It is sometimes terrifying how quickly the societal landscape evolves, and often not for the better, especially when it comes to freedom of artistic expression.

Hard Candy is an amazingly intelligent, sensitive and thrilling movie that is effectively a 90-minute  two-hander of intense conversation, like Educating Rita or Venus in Fur. Elliot Page plays Hayley, a fourteen-year-old girl who meets middle-aged photographer Geoff (Patrick Wilson) on a chatroom, and gets together with him at a local coffee house. They hit it off and she talks him into taking her back to his place, where things take an unusual and *SPOILERY* turn. Hayley roofies Geoff and he wakes up in a slightly less horrifying scenario than the fellas in Hostel: tied to a chair, threatened with bodily harm... and accused of child abuse. Hayley has targeted Geoff as a predator, but once he is subdued, the identity of the predator is suddenly up for question.

I thawt yew wawnted to be shayved... down thayr

It is rare, as the writer and director of this picture both remarked, for a movie to be so succinctly summarised, but as is often the case with character-driven pieces, plot is not necessarily pertinent. Almost Famous and Me Without You are two examples that spring to mind of one-line-plot movies that find their momentum in their immensely detailed characters, who feel like real people. Although Hard Candy is much harder-hitting material than either of these movies, it is essentially a character profile with genuine dramatic tension. Hayley is a vigilante and Geoff is a sinner of the worst kind who tries to spare his reputation the truth right until the end. It could work well as a stage play in its excellence with dialogue and characterisation, and purposeful use of literal frames to reflect the photographic lens through which Geoff allegedly sees the world. 

Hard Candy hangs heavily on its two leading actors, and they carry it with simultaneous ease and torment. Page, given the duality of Hayley, is required to craft a base character, and an alter ego masquerading as a naive teenager, and it is eerily effective. She shows little glimmers of flirtation and precociousness, while maintaining an adolescent naivete; later she suggests entirely through facial expression that her character was molested as a child, and sees this whole ordeal as retribution for not only herself, but for every other young person who was ever victimised. Wilson, meanwhile, runs the gamut of emotion, and is essentially the characterisation of the audience itself, reacting to the each new twist of the ordeal he finds himself in. Importantly, he never once shows true evil to anybody. He goes through flirtatious manipulation, lust, confusion, anger, mortal fear, rage, guilt, submission, but he never lets us see the side of him that caused Hayley to target him in the first place. He is a real, complex person with many layers, and Wilson's performance is nothing short of athletic.

For tonight is the night that my beautiful
creature is destined to be born!

Not only is this movie an intense emotional ride, but it is like wandering through a chic, minimalist art gallery to look at. Everything has a sleek Scandinavian flavour to it, with expressive pops of colour hinting at some thematic undertone. Indeed, the opening credits are a simple shifting of a single red shape among a variety of white backgrounds, suggesting a small but lingering figure stalking just beyond the periphery. And not for the first time, we are forced to consider who this figure really is. Perhaps their identity depends on what sort of a person is looking. Those with devious skeletons in their closet may see that figure as the reason they still look over their shoulder every day. Those of a more innocent nature might consider it the unremarkable perpetrator of terrible cruelty. 

School of Rock (2003)

Would you tell Hendrix to sell his guitar?!

And we shall teach rock...to the world.

If you answered 'yes' to this question, then getchow ass outta my neighborhood! School of Rock holds at least one record in my life: it is the only movie I ever watched twice in the cinema... in one day! My sister and I went, then went again - it was that good of a movie. And most of all, it inspired us to get more into music. My siblings and I were heavily influenced by our mother to make music, and to this day, I play eight instruments and sing. Although I didn't get into a serious band until I was 15, I spent years pursuing music because of this amazing movie.

Jack Black plays Dewey Finn, your typical pub-singing rock musician, whose "rock'n'roll authority" is deemed too much for the band that he founded. The band kicks him out, and he declares that he will find an awesome new group to kick their asses. Dewey lives with his friend and former bandmate Ned Schneebly (Mike White) and his pain-in-the-ass girlfriend Patty (Sarah Silverman), who constantly pressure him for the rent he owes them but can't give them, thanks to his unstable professional habits.

STEP OWWFFF!

When Dewey answers the phone relating to a teaching job offer for Ned, he sees his opportunity to pay off his debts and maybe get fucking Patty off his back for a while. He easily lands Ned's job at a posh prep school, naively headed by Principal Mullins (the hilarious Joan Cusack), and quickly hijacks the class as the next upcoming rock band and their extensive crew to play at the upcoming Battle of the Bands. While Dewey find his professional and spiritual calling, the kids feel liberated from their strict middle-class upbringings, and everybody embraces their skill and happiness. It is a shared turf of happiness for people of every age and background.

So what makes School of Rock so fucking awesome? Well Jack Black has to be awarded a considerable amount of credit. He is the kind of character that most people had in their school class at some time; someone charismatic and funny and annoying and enviable. I certainly remember a girl called Lotte who was my class's Jack Black. He, like Robin Williams and Jim Carrey before him, improvs so much of his performance, and is as engaging and loveable as both of the guys aforementioned. I imagine that even without the amazing script by Mr Schnaaayblaaay himself Mike White, Jack Black's improvisation skills would have carried the movie.

The script and direction is reminiscent of John Hughes, with a childish naivete in adults that turns out a miraculously compassionate coming-of-age film. It doesn't pull a "how do you do, fellow kids", or make every child character a brainless brat with no second (letalone third) dimension. The kids have their own struggles, from weight issues to overbearing parents, and they are really relatable - Tomika's line "cos I'm fat" breaks my heart every time. These were not experienced kid actors (except perhaps for Miranda Cosgrove), they were young and enthusiastic musicians who brought their own spark to this amazing ensemble movie. And God knows that in the company of Jack Black, they were clearly made to feel like a million dollars in their own selves, and each one of them shines.

"Bubblegum!"

Jack Black is a really special dude. To many adults, he probably comes across as a maddening man-child who has never 'grown up'. He presents a real Peter Pan sitch. He clearly lives every day in joy and fun and fulfilment, and it doesn't hurt anyone. In fact, it seems to do so many people so much good: from his fans, to his kids, to his colleagues, to his own self. His personality is infectious and has such a liberating quality. I don't care how few people admit to it, many folks would love to feel so comfortable as to be a Jack Black of this world. I sure know I would. It's the kind of feeling adults only get on drugs or at festivals.

The adult creators have never lost their roots, and totally get what it is to have adolescent angst, and manage to channel them into creative arts. It is so rare for a movie that truly understands kids to be released, and God knows, at that stressful and crazy point in life, kids need a couple of movies that speak to them. School of Rock can be that to pretty much anyone. I still haven't played in a hardcore rock band that people love, but this movie makes me feel like I still can.

Jeepers Creepers (2001)

Monster movies become more difficult to pull off as the years go by. When we think of a monster, almost all of our perceptions rely heavily on pre-existing stories - werewolves, vampires, swamp things - or misunderstood ferocious friends - Monsters Inc., Gremlins. On top of this, the horror movie scene has gone a long way since the respective heydays of Universal or Hammer villains, and a lot of moviegoers find the more humanly-based frights scarier. Monsters are something that kids fear are lurking under their beds; adults fear other people.

What Jeepers Creepers proves is that a scary monster movie relies not only on a creature that regular adult viewers can actually find terrifying, but on crafting a terrifying viewing experience. The suspense created by Victor Salva and his amazing crew has made this movie stand out in my mind for the past fifteen-odd years. The way they construct realistic yet engaging dialogue is an added bonus. I understand that this may be a controversial opinion: the movie may be lumped in with Juno (2007) and found obnoxious and irritating by some people because of the script style, but for someone of my generation and sense of humour, it is a very welcome departure from normal horror dialogue.

What is Michelle Duggar's vagina doing here?

Trish (Gina Philips) and Darry (Justin Long) are siblings driving the long way home from college at the end of the semester in a fucking sweet vintage automobile. Trish is riding home with her dumbass kid brother because she has broken up with her boyfriend, and Darry is riding home with a bag full of his dirty drawers for his momma to wash. They are cruising along the empty dirt roads somewhere in the Corn Belt of the US when they encounter an aggressive driver in a startling rusty slaughterhouse truck. After being run off the road, they drive right past the same truck, and a darkly shrouded figure dumping bloody-sheet-wrapped shapes down a giant pipe outside an abandoned chapel.

That youthful sense of morbid curiosity masked as morality that only those under 30 can muster (or at least I hope so) sees the two turn around and investigate. Darry insists that if his sister were at the bottom of that pipe, she would hope that someone like him would go back and possibly save her life, while we somewhat suspect that the testosterone and adrenaline rushing through his freshman veins is what is truly motivating him. She relents and they drop in on the chapel, and soon come across a weirdly sophisticated cavern of carnage. Medieval-style demonic figures are intricately carved into wooden furniture, and the ceiling is adorned with a mass of preserved bodies "like the fucking Sistine Chapel!"

Deez nuts!

The movie has already got the action going at an incredible rate, and it is not so low as to insert one of those the killer comes home while the kids are rummaging around it and we wonder if they will get caught and killed scenes. The kids get the fuck out and rush to call the police at the first backwoods diner they find. The movie also rises above the we've seen horror and none of the other people believe us scene at this point, clashing our main protagonists and the authoritative character parts together when our monster is finally revealed. The narrative of Jeepers Creepers makes an incredibly fluid job of abandoning cliche from beginning to end, without ever making it seem humorous or ironic like Scream.

Along the way, Trish and Darry come across two women. At first, they come across a house inhabited by a crazy old cat lady, played by veteran Eileen Brennan, which leads to perhaps the most amazingly sinister sequence of the movie. Later, at the police station, a woman named Jezelle barges her way in, acknowledged by the coppers as the unofficial psychic of the force. She is terrified, and knows information about the siblings' ordeal that nobody but the audience could. She explains that there is a local creature that wakes from hibernation every twenty-three years to feed on parts that it "likes", being drawn to the fear it smells in people. Even Trish tries to dismiss Jezelle as a creepy nutjob, but Darry's experiences at the bottom of the pit sees him fall hopelessly into her metaphorical arms.

Tree Surgeon, Have Axe, Will Travel

So what makes the Creeper, as played by Jonathan Breck, such an effective monster? Although the costume design is fabulous, Salva's intent for the character and its embodiment by Breck are the making of a true monster. The DVD features show the director conducting auditions for the antagonist as a "sniff test", and Breck's audition tape sees the actor snap into character before even entering the room. He even turns the door handle creepily, and darts his head around the door, sniffing and snarling like a beast, before literally rubbing cheeks with his stand-in actor, sniffing for life blood. It is such an audacious audition that intrudes entirely on the personal space of even actors, and Breck brings every ounce of this energy, and more, to his every move.

Not only does Jeepers Creepers start and continue strongly, but it manages one of the most memorable horror endings in 21st century cinema, which I shan't spoil here. I fear no dark winged beast that will eat my tongue in the non-sexy way, but the tension conjured by this movie makes me feel, time after time, like I'm standing on a trapdoor with a sack and noose over my head. It's like watching a guitar string being slowly and gently tightened, or even a harpsichord like in The Haunting, knowing that at any second that strip of steel will lick across your face before you even realise you've lost an eye and a quarter of your hair. Regardless of how I know this movie shot-for-shot and line-for-line, the imagery and pacing never fails to suspend my nerves on a knife edge. As long as you are the type of person that would tell your younger brother that he is a "ball licker", you will be in your element.

The Haunting of Sharon Tate (2019)

Making films, music and literature based - either loosely or otherwise - on real events, and more specifically, on true crime, is far from a modern trend, and yet it is still a divisive topic on moral grounds. The better known serial killers, such as Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, continue to inspire recreations of their lives and crimes, and the human condition of morbid curiosity keeps ensuring return on profit is seen. The question of whether it is ethical to rehash such crimes for 'entertainment purposes', and how such recreations can impact the survivors and their loved ones, continues to be asked, yet it seems to have little effect on the industry's production of such movies, or on audiences' viewing of them. Monster and The Girl Next Door are serious and well-made productions based to varying degrees on true crime, but for every Monster, there are easily a hundred The Haunting of Sharon Tate.

Critics have been slamming this movie for many reasons, and Lionsgate have been pulling out all of the damage control stops to ensure people still give their movie the benefit of the doubt. Not only is this not a well-made film, but it is a very inconsiderate one. It doesn't seek simply to recreate the crimes of the Manson family in 1969, but to put a supernatural twist on things, and perpetuate dismal rumours first circulated by the media mere hours after the news broke fifty years ago: talk of infidelities, open relationships and devil worship somehow being the cause of those events is tasteless and speculative at best. What, I ask you, could possibly be gained, or added to this story, by the suggestions of Roman Polanski (who is not portrayed onscreen in this movie) 'cheating' on his wife, or Gibby Folger and Wojciech Frykowski manipulating Sharon into a position of vulnerability? It drags this whole sorry tale to the depths of tabloid fodder in the least tactful way possible.

The media spin that continues to embody the Tate-LaBianca murders could be an interesting way to tell this story, but this is clearly not what the makers had in mind. If nothing else, its only real goals are to paint Sharon and her friends as people they were not, with an aim to add a sense of suspicion and tension that never existed. And this is not to say that this movie manages to achieve even the slightest feeling of suspense. It consists primarily of repetitive sequences of Sharon creeping wide-eyed around her dark house, convinced that she is in danger but for some reason doing nothing about it.

For some reason, Hilary Duff 'stars' as Sharon Tate, and we are suddenly and rudely reminded of why her repertoire never really expanded beyond Lizzie McGuire and being Steve Martin's stroppy teen daughter in Cheaper by the Dozen. She looks and sounds nothing like Sharon Tate, despite her fleeting attempts at some sort of regional accent. Duff is very strangely directed throughout this picture, in every way from accent to emotion and mindset. There are odd moments at which she seems to react to things in ways that just don't match the action, and her character's thought processes are sloppy. This heavily pregnant woman, whose several friends are literally in the next bedroom, keeps creeping around this dark house when she suspects intruders. No guns, no phone calls, she doesn't even turn on the lights or scream for someone. She just keeps skulking around in the dark.

The main narrative bookending this piece is what pissed me off the most. The movie opens in black and white, and purports to show us Sharon giving an interview in 1968. The interviewer asks her if she has ever had any experiences she considered psychic. Now this in itself is not crazy, as there was quite a trend for metaphysics, spirituality and psychedelia in the '60s and '70s, and this could have been an interesting approach in more competent hands. But Sharon responds that she had a nightmare in which she and her friends are murdered, which "I guess you could consider a psychic experience". We are given no other indication at this point in the story's timeline that could give weight to this idea that a simple bad dream is some form of premonition, and the narrative only seems to show Sharon come to recognise this much later on. This terribly contrived plot device is the frayed string from which the entire narrative precariously hangs.

Now when I did some basic research into this film (which I did when I got to this very point in writing my review), I made a striking discovery about the resume of writer/director Daniel Farrands. Not only is his filmography comprised almost entirely of horror sequels and true crime movies, but he actually wrote the aforementioned The Girl Next Door, which was a very good and considerately handled movie. Interestingly, that was more or less the first thing he wrote in twenty years, preceded by Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers in 1995. This in itself makes me wonder why and how Farrands' ability to craft believable dialogue that propels a difficult narrative seems to have evaporated. On top of this, his more recent credits include another dreadful Amityville movie, and production on an upcoming piece titled The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson. There is a definite pattern there, which I might not take such a distaste to if not for Farrands' sharply declining standards. In 2007, he proved himself capable of taking a horrific true crime, dramatising it in a way that gives context to the behaviours of its characters, and approaching what is essentially an exploitation picture with utmost dignity, respect and care. Somehow, he is now a shadow of his former professional self.

Farrands' habit of running with the scrag ends of existing narratives smacks of commercial and artistic cynicism. He demonstrates little ability to create original material, and he has absolutely forgotten - or neglected - the way real people speak, which is so crucial to his line of work. Often when we hear of true crime stories, particularly those in which people are somehow convinced or manipulated into committing crime by others, the mind really boggles at how things get from A to B. What does a person have to say, and how do they have to say it, in order to get another person to commit such cruelty on innocents? With The Girl Next Door, Farrands showed us just how an evil adult could have manipulated neighbourhood children into torturing and killing a young girl, and it was his way with dialogue that made these unimaginable events believable. Now, he can't even convince us that a woman is trying to tell her friends she thinks she is being stalked. I mean damn, that's not a lot to ask of a writer who has previously shown his mettle with conveying difficult ideas on screen.

Although The Haunting of Sharon Tate is nowhere near as technically inept as I had expected it to be, it is just a sad, sorry and puzzling excuse of a film. A film doesn't have to be a masterpiece to be redeemable, but this is just the laziest form of 'retelling', and is not entertaining, scary, intriguing or compelling. As unethical as it can seem, it is undeniable that our nature as humans is to find curiosity in the extraordinary, in the things we don't see every day or have never seen before. Whether this is a motorway pileup or a murdered film star, we can't help but be fascinated. But there are so many elements of the Manson crimes that actually warrant elaboration and exploration, that don't disrespect the memories of the victims, and better filmmakers have explored these. Cult mentality, the transition to a life of crime, the death of a social movement; these are all insights that can be gained from these awful events that people can learn from. We gain nothing from 60 minutes of Hilary Duff creeping around in the dark and 25 minutes of crass crime scene recreation. This movie is utterly worthless.

The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999)

The Rage: Carrie 2 was probably one of the first sequels I ever saw to a classic horror movie. Carrie, as I have documented before but have yet to formally review, was a conquest of my early adolescence that bordered on obsession, and it remains one of my favourite horrors of all time. My stepsister showed me this sequel when I was about 14, and strangely, I have grown to love it. Years ago, it was a movie I would watch in deepest secrecy, for fear of word getting out that I actually enjoyed such an obviously inferior product; nowadays I adhere to the Dave Gorman school of thought when it comes to the concept of ‘guilty pleasures’ (look this up if you don’t catch my meaning – it’s most amusing and true). I used to love to ride this movie’s ass and say how dreadful it was, but my understanding of film grew at twice the rate of my every other form of maturation, hence my now differing opinion .

How do filmmakers usually achieve a sequel when the lead characters have already been killed off? They resurrect the characters; they repeat the events of the first movie with a new bunch of characters; they continue the story of those who may still be living. Enter Amy Irving, who wisely or not decided to reprise her role of Sue Snell, who is now a middle-aged woman, working as a high school counsellor, somewhat haunted by her involvement in the whole Carrie White debacle some twenty years earlier. That’s fine, but she wasn’t the one with a special power, and it wouldn’t be Carrie if it didn’t have telekinesis. Enter Emily Bergl as Rachel, an unusual looking grunge kid who lives with gnarly trucker foster parents thanks to her own mother’s incarceration at the local asylum. She embodies the ‘90s Nirvana mood – listening to Marilyn Manson and Billie Holliday, passing her evenings working in a photo hut, sneaking her beloved dog Walter into the house at night. She is so befitting the revival of the tormented high school girl.

Boy, didn't think the critics would hate it
this much!

It wouldn’t be a modern high school flick without cliques, which is the engine of this movie’s climax. Rachel is the usual grungy outcast, and her only friend Lisa (Mena Suvari) promptly kills herself in a spectacular effects sequence, having been dumped by a jock she questionably gave her virginity to the night before. The jocks keep a crass system, awarding points to each other according to the girls they sleep with, and Lisa is the game’s latest victim. When the jocks realise they could be in deep shit - having played around with underage girls, prompting one to commit suicide - they decide that ‘damage control’ is the way to go, and they set about making sure Lisa’s only friend won’t squeal on them.

In the midst of all this, one particularly upstanding jock, Jesse (Jason London) decides that what they are doing is wrong (several girls into his scoresheet, of course), and happens to grow close to Rachel. This attracts the cattiness of Tracy, the girl he has blown off, who also becomes determined to take revenge on Rachel. In a mere week, Rachel has gone from invisible virgin outcast with one living friend, to deflowered public enemy #1 with no living friends. High school, eh?

No way the chicks can resist our wet-look
hair gel and sweater vests, man!

Was there a part of you that ever felt like Chris and Billy got off easy in that spinning firey blaze of a car, or that Norma’s assumed unconscious death by smoke inhalation could have been more brutal? Fear not, friends, for this is a late ‘90s movie, and more blood must be spilled than from that suspended metal bucket. That means exploding eyeballs sharded with glass, and testicles ripped off with harpoons, and even a fatal stabbing by CD (guess the format knew it was doomed, wanted to take a bitch out with it!) The finale of the film is a thoroughly enjo

yable flaming bloodbath, and doesn’t it always suck that little bit more when the location being torched is a multi-million dollar mansion of a house, rather than a crappy old school gym?

So what’s the catch? What makes this Carrie 2? The big revelation is that after Carrie’s Daddy Ralph ran away (this is much more detailed in the novella than the 1976 film), one of the hussies he gave a damn-good Bible lesson to was Rachel’s mom, impregnating her with a telekinetic spawn ready to wreak havoc on her high school in later years. That Ralph! 

Ohhh no ya don't! If we have to endure Jason
London's horrible delivery, you do too!

This movie is by no means perfect, and there are still some parts that make me chuckle. Jason London’s delivery, having arrived at the finale party late and found nothing short of a mass teenage grave in flames, runs to Rachel saying, ‘They’re all dead – we gotta get outta here, let’s go’. As if he were a secretary announcing the name of the next patient the doctor was ready to see; totally casual. The asylum is staffed by the most incompetent nurses ever, who fail to notice a patient escaping, but grab another patient who was right next to the door at the same time and drag them off in a backwards-run. I mean, no need to soothe a mental patient dude, just grab them from behind unannounced and literally run with them. No biggy. It’s the small things that make the movie unintentionally funny, and the big things that make it unintentionally good.

Me, pretending to be outraged by this movie

For a number of years – ever since I grew to not hate myself for enjoying this film – I have been firm in my opinion that this would be a good movie, were it not the sequel to Carrie. If this could have just been The Rage, without any links to Brian DePalma’s movie or even Stephen King’s book, and been your average teen angst horror, it would have been great. But by adding that little subtitle, and insisting on trying to milk the bosom of a twenty-five year old movie, it throws away any such credibility.

Artistically, the movie is fairly sound. Some fun is had with black-and-white visuals, and distorted angles and frame speed, while the aforementioned suicide sequence still blows my mind to this day, and I wish the DVD had some kind of documentary that would explain their technique. Because I’m still not quite sure how they did it, and that is the kind of movie I admire. The music is a major strength, with a beautiful haunting theme melody that is performed alternately on piano, keyboard and electric guitar. It is grimy, atmospheric and so well suited. It is perhaps the best thing about this film. The script is nothing special, but it is surprisingly well acted – particularly by the younger members of the cast – and looking back, it fits very nicely into the young late ‘90s horror landscape. It’s very much worth an hour and forty of your time. Just try to forget the whole ‘it’s the sequel to Carrie’ thing.

The Craft (1996)

The Craft has something of a notorious place within my existence. As I have written before, my parents were hippies and Wiccans, and I was raised within the Pagan community for the first eight-or-so years of my life. When my Mum's Catholic piano teacher died of cancer around that time, my mother, for whatever reason, had some metanoia and suddenly became a Catholic and insisted on taking me and my younger siblings with me - causing much turmoil between Mum and me in my early adolescence. My dad continued as a privately practicing Pagan, telling my sister Relly and me every night and every time we said goodbye 'Goddess bless you'. He continues to do so to this day.


When I was 12, my awesome stepsister was 'babysitting' me and Rell one night, and showed us the movie The Craft. I started making mental connections, and one day confronted my mother, 'Were we Wiccans?' and she was very quick to shut down the conversation. A year later, I was well-studied in Wicca and had had many informative discussions with my old man, and considered myself a practicing Wiccan. One day I made the mistake of mentioning The Craft to my Mum and she went ballistic, and confiscated my video of the movie. Upon my fifteenth birthday (the movie is a 15 certificate in the UK), I rebelliously flaunted my very own DVD copy, with the knowledge that legally my mother couldn't stop me!

Of all old favourite movies, The Craft remains mostly unchanged in my estimations over the years: it is not a great movie, but it's a bloody good teen movie that many millions hold dear as a cult favourite. Sarah (Robin Tunney) has moved to some town from San Francisco with her father and stepmother. Their house is the perfect modern witch house, and on the rainy day they move in, Sarah is confronted by a local bum carrying a snake. Her father chases him off the property. When she starts at the local Catholic school - where the kids have to wear uniform - she attracts the attention of Wiccan trio Nancy (the gorgeous Fairuza Balk), Bonnie (Neve Campbell in the midst of her '90s peak) and Rochelle (Rachel True), who sense that Sarah is the 'fourth' that they have been seeking to complete their ritualistic circle.

Although the girls get off to a bumpy start after introducing Sarah to their shoplifting habits at a local occult store, they quickly become close friends and develop their cumulative powers. Meanwhile, jock Chris (Skeet Ulrich, also of Scream), has expressed an interest in Sarah, but spreads vicious rumours about her the day after she turns down his invitation to go back to his house. Chris, having previously done something similar to Nancy, draws both the contempt of the circle and the infatuation of Sarah, and his subjectivity to their powers is ultimately his undoing.

The girls each pursue their individual angsts with their newly developed powers: they are good characters in their own contexts, and played well by their respective actors, and they have a fabulous chemistry as an ensemble, which we all know is of high importance to any good teen movie. Although the actors were all into their 20s at the least (Rachel True was actually 30, and has aged incredibly in the years since!), they really invoke that high school feeling that any adolescent can identify with, and as a teenager, I loved that I saw parallels between the girls and myself. There is rage, and jealousy, and rivalry, and social frustration, and who hasn't been there, and felt that it was the end of the world?

Of course, The Craft is somewhat exaggerated in the realities of Pagan practice. I have never known of a Pagan who could carry out the tricks that these girls do, because that's not how magick works. It's about the use of energies and the powers of nature, it's not about levitation and metamorphosis and casting hallucinations. But the fantastical quality that the fictionally 'witchy' theme brings is a brilliant way to tie the whole picture together, and to visually manifest the raging hormones and firey emotions of a group of teenagers. The Craft is no masterpiece, but it is exactly what it sets out to be: a highly relatable and entertaining teen movie, and it is very dear to me.