Craft (1996)

USA Today
"...Invoking the spirit of HEATHERS and CARRIE, THE CRAFT offers choice vignettes of voodoo revenge..." 05/03/1996 p.10D

Variety
"...A neatly crafted film....[Fleming] has coaxed marvelous performances from his inviting ensemble, particularly the appealing Tunney..." 05/06/1996

DVD Times 8 of 10
The Craft is an engaging crossbreed between the high school and horror genres, and for the most part is much better than you might think. Scream was just over the horizon -- Neve Campbell went on to make that film shortly afterwards -- and soon the horror genre would descend into smirking, would-be-postmodern knowingness. Where The Craft benefits is that it plays its story straight, and its four lead actresses play their roles with conviction. Also refreshingly, the girls are the central characters: apart from Sarah's father, who barely appears, the main male character is Skeet Ulrich's Chris, who is pretty much kept in the margins. There's no doubt that Robin Tunney can act (she won an award as a woman with Tourette's Syndrome in the indie Niagara Niagara), and she's certainly capable enough in the leading role, but it's clear the writers and the filmmakers are more interested in Nancy. Fairuza Balk at her best is one of the most compelling young actresses around; as Nancy's new-found powers push her over the edge, Balk manages to stay this side of outright scenery-chewing. It's not her fault that the film jettisons any attempts at subtlety towards the end and resolves itself with a welter of special effects and possibly the greatest number of snakes and creepy-crawlies ever gathered in one place. - Gary Couzens
 
San Francisco Chronicle 9 of 10
High school gives "The Craft" a context within which it becomes perfectly understandable why four bright girls with a lot on the ball would develop witchcraft skills, cast spells and kill people. Not everyone wants to go out for the cheerleaders..."The Craft," directed by Andrew Fleming who did the college sex-comedy "Threesome," is the smartest and most satisfying horror thriller to come out in a while. There's plenty of spectacle, but it never takes over. Everything is consistently grounded in the separate motivations of four, clearly-drawn young women...The young actresses are superb, and they make an appealing, believable group of friends...Even when they're in the woods, mixing their blood with (nonalcoholic) wine and drinking it -- "I drink of my sisters," they say, and each takes a sip -- it seems like a healthy, if histrionic, bonding in the face of a hostile social scene...But the spells they unleash on the world have consequences, and these consequences spiral. A love spell leads to a sexual assault. A mild hate spell leads to a prissy classmate losing all her hair. And the girls become drunk with power...From there on, "The Craft" becomes a kind of supernatural "Heathers." It recognizes that the emotions set loose in high school are of the most fierce variety, even though it's just kids in school. - Mick LaSalle