The Craft: Legacy

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Zoe Lister-Jones directs. Hillary Spera behind the camera. Libby Cuenin cuts. Runs lean at under 100 minutes. A commercial under-performer on release. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

• 1Earned back only 13% of its budget on initial theatrical — a commercial disappointment on release.
• 2Released 6 years ago.
• 3Part of the "The Craft Collection" — so the characters or world continue elsewhere.
• 4Directed by Zoe Lister-Jones, shot by Hillary Spera. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
• 5Editor Libby Cuenin shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
• 6Cailee Spaeny and Zoey Luna and Gideon Adlon carry the top of the cast.
• 7Marketing tagline: "The ritual begins again.".
• 8IMDB entry: tt4685762 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
• 9Classified under 13 themes, including "witch", "magic", "ritual", "supernatural".

The technical file

Cinematography

Hillary Spera

Editing

Libby Cuenin

Production design

Hillary Gurtler

Costume design

Avery Plewes

Makeup / hair

Shannon Spence

VFX supervisor

David Lebensfeld

Sound

Steve Foster

Stunt coordinator

Anthony Ferri

Runtime

94 min · 1h 34m

Aspect ratio (typical)

1.37:1 (Academy)

Status

Released

Budget

$18,000,000

Box office

$2,300,000

Return

13% of budget

Original language

EN

Certification (US)

PG-13

IMDB

The Craft: Legacy (2020) ↗

Part of

The Craft Collection

The Craft is a 1996 American supernatural horror film directed by Andrew Fleming and distributed by Columbia Pictures. It was written by Andrew Fleming and Peter Filardi and stars Robin Tunney, Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell, and Rachel True. Its story follows a group of four outcast teenage girls at a fictional Los Angeles parochial high school who pursue witchcraft for their own gain but soon encounter negative repercussions. A sequel, The Craft: Legacy, produced by Jason Blum and Blumhouse Productions, was released on October 28, 2020.

• 
  The Craft

  1996
• 
  The Craft: Legacy

  2020 · this one

Also by

Zoe Lister-Jones

• 
  Band Aid

  2017 · ★ 6.3
• 
  How It Ends

  2021 · ★ 4.8

Stills · wallpapers

Selected frames

Full-resolution frames — open one to save it as a wallpaper.

Wallpaper Wallpaper Wallpaper

Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

• 

  ▶
  THE CRAFT: LEGACY - Official Trailer - On Demand Everywhere October 28

  Trailer · Official

Community reviews

What people are saying

• Peter89Spencer2020-10-29
  ★ 5/10

  Disappointment that it didn't live up to the first film. At least first film was edgy, a little scary, even had goths.

  Read full review ↓
• tmdb179960752020-11-20

  Yes, it's a subpar sequel, but not nearly as bad as many people make it out to be. I get it, the movie errs on the side of being too preachy and "woke", which is something that was likely to get a lot of criticism, especially considering that this flick was bound to attract a lot of attention from fans of the first movie (mostly people in their mid to late thirties, like myself). Drawing a comparison is somewhat inevitable, given that "The Craft" (1996) is widely regarded as a cult flick, but, as a standalone movie, "Legacy" works in its own way and, while I can understand why so many people were dissatisfied with it, I would say that it doesn't deserve all these 1/10 scores that it got on IMDb or other websites. This sequel is mostly aimed at a younger audience with a more social justice warrior mindset, for the lack of a more fitting description. While I pretty much tend to roll my eyes at any kind of patchiness, I didn't find it impossible to sit through this flick, like I experienced with other "woke" movies. While in the original film we get a group of girls who were mostly miserable and dark, because of their inner conflicts and the fact that they were mostly ostracized by their peers, "Legacy" gives us four girls who are pretty much sparkly and happy. Actually, I would say that, at some point, I found them annoyingly loud and enthusiastic, especially about their magic, which they mostly use to play silly tricks and whatnot. While the 1996 film dwells into the lives of each of the four girls, allowing us to know them and empathize with them, "Legacy" mostly focuses on Lily, the main character. As a matter of fact, the other girls' lives are never even explored, which is something that bothered me a lot, because it felt alienating and rushed. Who are "the three others"? Lourdes, a transgender latina; Tabby, who we never really get to know and Frankie, a ditzy and likeable girl who, at some point, receives a snarky comment from a popular girl, who makes fun of her for being allegedly ugly. I think one of the biggest problems with "Legacy" is, precisely, that we don't really get to know who these girls are, while the original was a character-driven type of film. Seriously, these four girls are mostly likeable, they don't harm anyone and they just enjoy their powers, but don't really get to know them and many of their personality treats seem to have a cookie cutter approach. So, they're woke social justice warriors... big deal. Don't we get enough of these types of characters these days? Apparently, not. These girls just don't stand out in any way. It could have been much worse, though; at least it's not as "woke" as the "Black Christmas" remake from 2019 (now, what the fudge was that?) In "The Craft: Legacy" the main antagonist is none other than... patriarchy itself (surprise!). David Duchovny basically plays a lazily written character that could be described as "the very, very bad man that thinks women are weak and they need to submit to the greatness of the male". Seriously, how stereotypical and predictable is that? So, while in the original film, the girls have a falling out and are pit against each other, in this sequel, they also have a falling out, but eventually team up to fight a greater evil: men! To be fair, though, not all men in this movie are absolute trash... only 95.6% of them are. In spite of this, "The Craft: Legacy" is not really an anti-men statement, but more like a half-assed display on the consequences of male chauvinism does, which can be endured both by men and women. In doing so, the movie offers a bunch of contrived and even caricature-ish situations and characters, like the school bully turned into a social justice warrior, after the girls put a spell on him. Though, clearly, they are the good ones, the girls are not portrayed as absolute angels who can do no wrong and are constantly mistreated by the world. As a matter of fact, at some point, they acknowledge that they have (ab)used their power and force themselves to stop. "The Craft: Legacy" is definitely not a masterpiece and it will never gain cult status, like the original film, but it's not the unwatchable mess that people make it out to be. It should be mentioned that, while the 1996 flick had a few horror moments, "Legacy" doesn't even bother going there, and it ends up being more, like, a teen drama with a few sparkly stars here and there and an evil shapeshifting antagonist.

  Read full review ↓
• MongoLloyd2021-04-02
  ★ 1/10

  Sigh... not that I expected anything that equaled the original The Craft even partially, this is an insult to decades of pre-woke era American culture. Sensitivity and tolerance notwithstanding, this is thematically and aesthetically a major step down from the original film and urinates all over the legacy of that classic contribution to American cinema. Most glaring from a visual standpoint is casting of the 4 leads, a double wide boy posing as a girl(!?), a girl who looks like a boy, a legitimately ugly girl, and (at least) a beautiful descendant of the kings and queens of Africa. Why, pray tell would they deviate from the original formulation of alluring and powerful imagery of 4 uniquely beautiful young women and give us THAT mess instead? Because beauty is more than skin deep? Because inner beauty is more important? Because everyone is beautiful? Not quite. Beauty is just beauty, and they decided to leave it out of this film for the most part. Adding to the insult of this present day lesson in how to wokefy the sequel of a classic film, they decided to make every masculine character, evil. Great message.

  Read full review ↓

Production companies

Who made it

• 

  Blumhouse Productions

  US

• 

  Red Wagon Entertainment

  US

• 

  Columbia Pictures

  US

Key crew

• Dialogue EditorÈve Corrêa-Guedes
• Supervising Sound EditorMark Dejczak
• Sound Re-Recording MixerSteve Foster
• Sound MixerRuss Dyck
• Visual Effects SupervisorDavid Lebensfeld
• Foley ArtistSteve Baine
• Sound MixerGlen Gauthier
• Sound Re-Recording MixerChristian T. Cooke
• Visual Effects SupervisorKymberly Murphy
• Production Sound MixerLori Dovi
• Supervising Sound EditorAdam Stein
• Dialogue EditorMarvyn Dennis
• Sound Effects EditorDashen Naidoo
• Sound Effects EditorClaudia Pinto
• Visual EffectsAndrew Byrne
• Visual EffectsJason Evanko
• Visual EffectsPachi Gambra
• ADR EditorJill Purdy
• Sound DesignerAdam Stein
• Visual Effects SupervisorGrant Miller
• Visual EffectsSercan Yasar
• Visual Effects ProducerAndrew Kalicki
• Genetator OperatorShane Carpenter
• Visual Effects ProducerBryan Binder

Themes & keywords

What it's about, really

• witch
• magic
• ritual
• supernatural
• halloween
• black magic
• sequel
• dark fantasy
• teen witch
• woman director
• karma
• love spell
• supernatural horror

Release history · US

When it landed

• Digital2020-10-28PG-13
• Physical2020-12-22PG-13· Blu-ray / DVD

Also known as

International titles

• Колдовство: НаследиеRU
• Колдовство 2RU
• The Craft: Mladé čarodějkyCZ
• As Novas FeiticeirasPT
• Blumhouse's - Der HexenclubDE
• Clubul tinerelor vrăjitoareRO
• ザ・クラフト レガシーJP
• Blumhouse's The Craft: LegacyUS
• Der HexenclubDE