THE CRAFT (1996) ★

This review may contain spoilers.

Film where adolescent girls get power, yay for them, but then the male filmmaker has to wrap things up with the "no, not like that” adjustment. You'd expect this to be a bummer, and it kind of is, but even as Fleming does Nancy dirty, he makes the same mistake that anti-war filmmakers often make: he forgets that the magic qualities of the silver screen always make the most psycho and antisocial character seem the coolest. In this case the error works enormously to the film's benefit: if we can read the ending as a miscarriage of justice instead of just a triumphant reassertion of the status quo, then the film can still offer us a vision of liberatory possibilities for American girlhood (which I think is how most people see it). Justice for Fairuza!

A ★★★★ review of The Craft (1996)

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