Cast: Robin Tunney, Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell, Rachel True, Skeet Ulrich, Cliff DeYoung, Christine Taylor, Breckin Meyer, Nathaniel Marston, Helen Shaver, Assumpta Serna. Screenplay: Peter Filardi, Andrew Fleming. Cinematography: Alexander Gruszynski. Production design: Marek Dobrowolski. Film editing: Jeff Freeman. Music: Graeme Revell.
If the makers of The Craft had had the courage and the skill to parody or transcend the teen-movie clichés and characters -- the mean girl, the horny jock, the embarrassing or absent parents, and so on -- it might have been a genre classic like Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976) or Heathers (Michael Lehmann, 1989). That the filmmakers even come close enough to elicit the comparison owes much to the performances of the four young actresses who play the film's mischief-working coven. Robin Tunney is Sarah, the new girl in town with untested magic powers; Fairuza Balk is Nancy, the punk-gothic misfit; Neve Campbell is Bonnie, who bears disfiguring burn scars; and Rachel True is Rochelle, the biracial girl in an apparently all-white Catholic high school. Balk got most of the attention for her amusingly over-the-top performance, but Tunney deserves credit for underplaying her role, creating an outwardly normal but deeply troubled teenage girl. Sarah once tried to kill herself -- "the right way," says Nancy approvingly, noting that the scars on Sarah's wrists are vertical, along the vein, rather than horizontal. Falling in with the other three, Sarah not only discovers her own latent powers but also helps the other girls develop their own. Bonnie erases her scars, Rochelle gets even with the racist blonde (Christine Taylor) who referred to her as "Negroid," and Sarah causes the scornful jock (Skeet Ulrich) to fall in love with her. Nancy, however, goes to the dark side, and mayhem ensues. Unfortunately, the plot gets predictable at this turn, and the ending is anticlimactic.
