Watched the USA's 2020 The Craft: Legacy (1:33:29), apparently a sequel to the 1996 movie The Craft. Both movies follow the same template: a coven of four high school girls experimenting with their powers and leading, perhaps to appease the religious congregation, to a not-so-happy ending. Both movies are the female counterparts of the 1971 The Brotherhood of Satan and its own sequels.
Young Lily Schachner moves in with her mother Helen, a therapist from New Jersey, to the house of life counselor and author Adam Harrison. On her first day at school she meets three young witches--Tabby, Frankie, and Lourdes--who become interested in her because of her unusual abilities. They cast a spell on one of the school bullies, Timmy Andrews, who eventually falls in love with Lily due to an unwarranted love spell.
Like the original, 1996 movie, this one is a short course in Witchcraft 101. While the former was gothic and focused on female supremacy, this one is about the use of magical powers and gender sensitivity. There are interesting special effects, and the performances of Caily Spaeny, at times an Audrey Hepburn look-alike, as Lily and Nicholas Galitzine as Timmy, are truthful; both performers are ten cuts above the other members of the cast, especially those with adult roles, which are not well-handled.
The screenplay, story, and orchestration of characters are fine through three-fourths of the movie, after which they dwindle into B-Grade--as though the writers could not decide on how to end the movie over the last 15 minutes. As such, the ending is abrupt, illogical, and contrived--and even verges on being risible.
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