The film is attractively put together. It is photographed with quite a sumptuous colour palette. The teen cast all give decent performances. Particularly good is Fairuza Balk as the cynical teen Goth – it is hard to believe that she is the same kid who ten years before this played Dorothy in Disney’s Return to Oz (1985). The first half of the film contains a sharply observant depiction of teens and school life – Skeet Ulrich gives an finely attuned performance as the guy who trashes Robin Tunney’s reputation around the school after she turns his advances down; or the snobbish bitchery of Christine Taylor; and Fairuza Balk’s burned-out cynicism. And the introduction of the magic starts quite well – there’s one appealingly amusing scene where the witches sit down to get inspiration by watching tv’s Bewitched (1964-72).

Unfortunately the film comes completely apart in its latter half. Despite a promising start, the story falls into a predictable arc. While the film starts with scenes of the characters delighting in the use of powers, the plot quickly falls into hoary cliche that supernatural empowerment will inevitably turn against its user. And here the films feels the need to create a villain and end it all on a spectacular climax, something that totally bends the story out of shape. Fairuza Balk starts out as the most interesting character in the film. But by the end of the film, flying about, transforming herself into Robin Tunney to get a guy, trying to drive Tunney over the edge into suicide and so on, the character has become a cartoon villain. (Indeed decked out in black makeup and with her toothsome overbite, Fairuza Balk even looks like a cartoon character). The film never justifies itself in psychologically credible terms why Fairuza Balk would go from a cynical Goth to a power-crazed killer. And for reasons that are never explained the other two girls fall in behind Balk – she has the nominal explanation of having Summoned the Spirit, but they come with no such explanation.

We do not end up with the same characters that the film starts out with and the only reason for this is the film’s contorting itself out of shape for the sake of a big effects climax and to create a villainess. The Craft feels like a film that ended up being trapped without a second act and then tried to resolve everything by resorting to a cliche ending. Similarly annoying is the epilogue where Neve Campbell and Rachel True visit Robin Tunney, tentatively inquiring about maybe getting together in a circle again whereupon Tunney causes a storm cloud to appear and lightning to blast a tree branch. Throughout the story has seemed to be trying to make some moral point about misusage of powers but the end fade out on the lightning bolt and Tunney’s cold stare makes one wonder if right really has won or it is just one form of bitchery having triumphed over another.

The same basic formula subsequently inspires the inexplicably popular teen witch fantasy Charmed (1998-2006).

Director Andrew Davis had previously made the A Nightmare on Elm Street-influenced horror film Bad Dreams (1988) and then went onto make the excellent Threesome (1994) and the not-very-funny Watergate comedy Dick (1999) and to then revive the popular girl detective in Nancy Drew (2007). Co-writer Peter Filardi had previously written the afterlife film Flatliners (1990) and later wrote the tv remake of ‘Salem’s Lot (2004), as well as directed Ricky 6 (2000) about true-life Satanists.