Face-Off: The Witches of Eastwick vs. The Craft

New to Los Angeles, a teenage girl falls in with a trio of outcasts who attend St. Benedict’s Catholic School but whose true religious alliance is with the god Manon. At first the four girls have a good time exploring the possibilities of witchcraft, but when their spells take on a mean-spirited nature and start having dangerous consequences the new girl in town decides to ditch her wicked witch friends. Too bad there’s an old tradition of killing witches who try to leave their coven. THE CRAFT is a fun, well-told teen-centric tale.

For me, THE CRAFT was just a horror movie that I watched a couple times in the mid-’90s, but for others the witches in this film (who are referred to as the Bitches of Eastwick) have become iconic characters. The most popular of the bunch is Fairuza Balk as Nancy, a girl who has had a crappy life up to this point and sees the powers bestowed on her by Manon as a way to work her way up in the world. Unfortunately, she doesn’t care who she hurts on her ascension, or how badly. She is joined by Neve Campbell as Bonnie, who starts off self-conscious about the burn scars that cover her back and then becomes conceited when she makes them go away, and Rachel True as Rochelle, a bullied girl who gets devastating payback.

A natural witch, Robin Tunney’s Sarah Bailey has had magical gifts all her life, but she doesn’t start to realize her true potential until she hooks up with Nancy, Bonnie, and Rochelle. Although powerful, Sarah is also a typical teenage girl in that she has some baffling taste and makes bad decisions – like allowing herself to become so infatuated with a football playing classmate that she casts a love spell on him despite the fact that he’s obviously a douchebag. Sarah is sort of a bland character and is occasionally questionable, but she’s enough of a good girl that we remain on her side throughout the film and root for her when she turns against her bad friends.

Although their bond is formed by a death they may have caused, at first it’s mostly teenage fun and games for these girls. Love spells, levitation, the changing of eye and hair color through glamour spells… The invocation of the spirit of Manon is a bit concerning, but things still might have been okay if only the magic had stopped there.

The girls often go too far. Rochelle causes her bully’s hair to fall out, not realizing how awful the experience will be for the girl. Nancy causes the death of her scumbag stepfather. Getting back at a would-be date rapist results in another death. As the film goes on, the initial trio gets worse and worse, and when Sarah leaves the group they come after her hard, making her believe her father is dead, invading her home, attacking her physically and filling the place with creepy creatures, making her hallucinations of being surrounded by snakes come true. With friends like this, you don’t need enemies.