Have you ever noticed how some supernatural tropes often cycle in and out of popularity? As an aging millennial, I have witnessed a few resurgences each of pretty vampires, sexy werewolves, zombies (that are now often completely self-aware and also sexy for some reason), and of course, witches. If you were around  in the 90’s like myself, you may remember the few years when witches were like totally on the “hot” list. With offerings such as Sabrina the Teenaged Witch, Charmed, Hocus Pocus, and the re-syndication of Bewitched on Nick at Nite, it’s no wonder that it became popular among the alt-crowd to practice witchcraft.  But I distinctly remember a film that became the “must see” for aspiring young witches. In 1996, The Craft was released and pretty much defined the 90’s “bad girl” witch. Plus, it was rated R, so it had to be cooler, right? About a quarter of a century later, it definitely seems like witches are once again becoming in vogue. Striking while the iron’s hot, The Craft:Legacy, the long awaited sequel to The Craft has just been released on VOD.

The Craft: Legacy starts out quite similarly to its predecessor. Lily (Cailee Spaeny) moves into a new town when her mother marries Adam (David Duchovny.) Lily quickly befriends a group of outcast girls (Zoey Luna, Gideon Aldon, and Lovie Simone) at her new school who turn out to be a would-be witch coven. Her new friends are delighted to learn Lily possess innate magical powers, helping them all become an instantly powerful coven. Lily must contend with the responsibility with her newly discovered powers, school bullies, as well as her increasingly overbearing step-father.

While the initial synopsis of the film certainly seems like a copy and paste of the original, this film feels completely different. Unfortunately, in ways that are more in the negative than positive. How do I put this without giving too much away…The Craft: Legacy definitely feels like a product of 2020. Really, that shouldn’t be a such a bad thing. In fact, I like quite a lot about the messages of the film. One of the coven, Lourdes, is a trans girl played by Zoey Luna, an actual trans girl. Even better, the fact she was trans is only brought up a few times, and she is otherwise treated as a normal character. Hooray for representation! I also appreciated that other issues such as consent, homophobia, and toxic masculinity were brought up in the film.

Please understand that its not the addressing of these modern issues I had a problem with. But the fact that the film had so much to say (and none too subtly), that it cost it a lot of the plot that we paid to see. The original film was about a coven of witches using their newly found powers for self gain and revenge. In Legacy, the girls seem to get even more powerful in a quicker amount of time…and proceed to do not much with it. Like…really, you get these unbelievable magic powers and you use them mostly for things such as glitter baths, and materializing face jewels? The coven technically only casts one spell that really makes an impact on anything. I guess it’s nice that this new generation of witches is so “woke” that they already know better than to abuse their powers, but it really makes the girls themselves seem more flat because of it. The main character, Lily was decently acted and got a pinch more development than the rest, but I still felt like she was lacking in some dimension.

That is not to say the movie lacked plot. It actually had too much plot, just not the plot we wanted. There seemed to be so many sub-plots that either went nowhere, or got none of the development they needed. It almost felt as if this story was originally supposed to be adapted into an entire season of a CW show, but for whatever reason, got condensed into a movie instead. I actually wouldn’t have minded this story or characters if they were given about ten hours to breathe and develop. The eventual conclusion would have felt much more rewarding.

Look, I’m not saying I’m against sequels that take a major shift in tone, (look at Alien and Aliens, for example.) But when the shift is so drastic that the original magic of the first film is lost, I can’t help but to fault it. The Craft: Legacy had so much potential to be a modern, worthy sequel, but unfortunately fell flat of what it was trying to achieve. On the bright side, I have a feeling there will be plenty more witchy movies and shows to come in the next few years that should surely satisfy fans of The Craft.