Blumhouse's Der Hexenclub

It's great to see a mainstream teen movie with a diverse quartet of leads but, unfortunately, none of the new generation of witches in Zoe Lister-Jones' 'The Craft: Legacy' are as interesting as in the original, cult favorite 'The Craft' (Andrew Fleming, 1996). The story is thin and rushed - with half-baked social commentaries about being yourself, toxic masculinity, and girl power, the characters are underdeveloped and lifeless, and most of the acting is either amateurish or downright bad. Lousy.

What a misfire this movie was. The plot made zero sense, the new characters were entirely without nuance or development, and the visual effects looked like a bad Instagram filter.

It felt like the writer was so concerned with making the central cast come across as perfectly moralistic do-gooders, that they forgot they where writing teenagers. When a male (Timmy) is the most interesting and fleshed out character in a Craft sequel, you've done something horribly wrong.

You'll see quite a few moments in the trailer that never showed up in the actual film, which leads me to think that the heavy hand of an editor was involved in this one. I knew this movie was seriously in trouble when the central conflict wasn't even introduced until the last twenty minutes.

This feels like the Nickelodeon version of The Craft, with all of the original film's edges systematically filed down to smooth nubs that won't injure anyone if they accidentally bump up against it.

This is such a bad movie. Where is the magic, where is the darkness, I miss Nancy. The score was interesting, Nicholas Galitzine as Tommy was good and the last scene appearance was nice. The acting and the screenplay with its undeveloped plots were awful. Stick to the original!

Such a disappointment. I love the first one so much.

This one had ZERO character development for three of the girls and only concentrated on one. You learned zip about the other three. The original movie, with a back story for each girl, made you root for them. This one decided character development didn't matter.

It had its interesting moments and threw in a twist, but once the twist happened, they had a horrible score behind it that detracted from the scene so much, I thought, "Ugh, who decided on this crappy music?"

What a shame. I still never get sick of the original.

Granted, I did not have high hopes for "The Craft: Legacy" when it was initially announced, and I dreaded the outcome of it. And sure enough, the movie was a weak imitation of the original 1996 "The Craft" movie.

Writer and director Zoe Lister-Jones failed utterly to bring something worthwhile to the screen, as "The Craft: Legacy" just felt like a watered down more family-friendly version of the 1996 movie. And that was just an abysmal turn for the movie to take. Especially since the 1996 movie was pretty good and impacting back in the day.

I am sure that "The Craft: Legacy" was meant to be a continuation of the 1996 movie, but it just failed at being an original movie in its own right, and it had none of the charm, appeal or impact that the 1996 movie had.

Sure, if you haven't seen the 1996 "The Craft" then I suppose "The Craft: Legacy" is a good enough movie. But for us that did watch it, then "The Craft: Legacy" is lacking the magic, the foreboding darkness that threatened behind the alluring call of using witch magic. And more importantly, it was lacking memorable characters.

The character gallery in "The Craft: Legacy" felt like they were using cardboard stand-in, most of them fully devoid of backstory and personalities. Even David Duchovny's character felt like a puppet just brought in for the heck of it.

Not even having the likes of David Duchovny and Michelle Monaghan in the movie could do much to lift up what was essentially a hollow and shallow movie experience.

The most interesting part about "The Craft: Legacy" was the person that showed up in the end of the movie, and get this, was present for a whole staggering 3 second or so! Now, I am not going to say whom it is, but yeah, you guessed it already, because it was that predictable.

My rating of "The Craft: Legacy" lands on a less than mediocre four out of ten stars. The movie was watchable, for sure, but this was by no means a worthy runner up to the 1996 "The Craft".