The Craft
It’s part of a basic spiritual truth, said in many ways in many faiths: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
I read The Crucible in 11th-grade English and visited Salem, Massachusetts, in 2021. From February 1692 through May 1693, more than 200 people were accused of practicing Witchcraft. Historically, society has taught us to fear witches and stay away from magic. However, in pop culture, we’ve leaned into loving them, especially people who, at one point or another, felt like outcasts in society. I wrote about society’s love of witches in an article for The Daily Fandom a few years ago, but The Craft reminded me of a lot of the themes I touched upon.
This week, more than anything else, I wanted to write about a witch movie because Universal Pictures recently released the Wicked movie trailer. I wrote about Wicked (Broadway’s Version) during the strikes, but the trailer was just another reminder of why I love that story so much. There is so much complexity, and it raises so many questions about how we label people as good and bad and whether or not anyone is actually all good or all evil. I feel like The Craft touches on similar themes.
Why We Love Witches
Simply put, we idolize witches because they possess the powers we long to discover within ourselves. The core four in The Craft are high school students all dealing with their own traumas and limitations, but magic allows them to overcome this and seek revenge on those who caused them immense pain. We get to see the characters step out of victimhood in the way we've all wished we could, especially as teenagers. However, The Craft is complex and explores the different facets of human beings, how we all possess good and evil qualities, and whether or not those who have harmed us deserve bad things to happen to them in return.
The emotional depth of the characters in The Craft is a key aspect of the film's appeal. Each character's actions are rooted in their pain, making their reactions understandable, even if they aren't justifiable. This is most evident in the character Nancy, whose actions are driven by her deep family trauma. However, The Craft delves deepest into the main character, Sarah's inner conflict. Battling self-hatred and initially reluctant to embrace her own power, she demonstrates compassion, even towards those who have wronged her.
Whether good or bad, when the women in The Craft come together, they hold immense power. The idea that when a group of people who feel cast out unite, they no longer feel helpless further draws us into witch culture. There is great power when people come together, which can be used for good or bad, but as they say in the film, it all comes back threefold.
The Complexities Of The Craft
What makes the characters' newfound power so exciting is that each character has an intention, and when they mix their intention with magic, they can overcome some intense demons they're all facing. Unfortunately, things get out of hand pretty quickly. A major moment in The Craft begs the question: does someone deserve to die because of something they did to someone else? Some people could argue yes, and others could say no, but The Craft allows us to consider both arguments by presenting various perspectives from the characters.
Sarah
Sarah struggles with self-worth and accepting love because she's burdened by her mother's death, which occurred during her birth. Sarah carries the guilt that it may have been her fault her mother died, which leads her to self-harm. This causes the character to long for her classmate Chris' love and affection, even after he spreads harmful rumors about her at school. Sarah's love spell makes Chris fall hopelessly in love with her, embarrassing himself in front of all his friends, who he used to desperately try to be cool around.
Sarah's spell backfires when Chris becomes increasingly more obsessed with her and angry when she doesn't reciprocate his feelings. However, toward the film's end, when Nancy uses her powers to cause Chris to fall out a window and die, Sarah still feels bad for him. This is an intricate storyline because most of us feel little sympathy watching Chris die after he not only treated Sarah terribly at the beginning of the movie but also attempted to sexually assault her.
But Sarah questions whether she's responsible for his behavior since she was the one who put the love spell on him, which made him obsessed with her. Chris expressed bad behavior before the spell, meaning his actions toward her afterward were mostly his. However, as Sarah is told by the magic store owner, "Whatever you send out, you get back times three," and sending out the love spell intensifies Chris' bad behavior. What Sarah is experiencing is the thin between taking responsibility and self-blame. Sarah can not blame herself for what happened to Chris or for how he treated her, but she can take responsibility for using magic to try and fill a void within herself, which led to tragic events.
What intensifies this storyline is that when Nancy kills Chris, it's at the point where Nancy has already turned into a villain herself, which in turn makes him appear more innocent. I believe Chris' actions toward Sarah are worse than anything Nancy has done up to this point, but she's still portrayed as the evil one in this scenario. Going back to what society teaches us about witches and magic, we see Nancy as the villain and Chris as the victim, even though he's far from it because, as he declares to her before she kills him, Nancy is a witch.
Rochelle
Rochelle faces similar demons as she copes with a bully, Laura, on her swim team, who is blatantly racist, making fun of Rochelle’s hair and telling her to her face that she doesn’t like black people. Understandably, Rochelle wants Laura to understand the pain she’s caused, which leads to Laura losing all of her hair. There’s a scene near the end where Rochelle, despite Laura’s despicable actions, starts to feel bad for her when she’s crying on the locker room floor with a huge bald spot on top of her head. Then, at a party, Laura seemingly apologizes to Rochelle while wearing a very poor-quality wig.
This raises similar questions to Sarah’s storyline. Does Laura deserve Rochelle’s pity after how terribly she treated her? Was it wrong for Rochelle to make Laura lose all her hair, or was that simply karma? There’s no correct way to answer this question. However, The Craft is once again feeding us a very complex storyline in which we question whether Rochelle has become the villain in the process of defeating her bully.
Bonnie
Bonnie’s intention has nothing to do with anyone else but entirely to do with her own physical appearance. Tired of hiding due to scars all over her back and arms, Bonnie makes them go away, resulting in extreme confidence in her physical appearance, which soon causes Sarah to accuse her of becoming a narcissist. As an audience, we battle with feeling sorry for Bonnie because of her former physical ailments and disliking her because of the monster she’s turned into.
“I spent a big chunk of my life being a monster and now that I’m not I’m having a good time. I’m sorry if that bothers you,”-Bonnie, The Craft.
Nancy
Nancy is certainly the most complex character in the film, and like Bonnie, her arc doesn’t involve another person. Nancy lives in a trailer with her mother and stepfather, who are constantly arguing. With her power, Nancy unintentionally causes her stepfather to die of a heart attack, resulting in his $175,000 pension (according to an online calculator, this would be about $360,000 in 2024) going to her and her mother. They use the money to buy a beautiful apartment, curing Nancy’s feelings of inferiority based on her living situation. It says a lot about Nancy’s character that her wish comes true in a moment of rage and anger.
However, it also teaches us that anger can be a quite powerful emotion and we shouldn’t write it off as negative. Nancy turns out to be the biggest monster of all the characters, using her power to kill Chris and attempt to kill Sarah in the end. However, when we look back at what her life was like at the beginning of the film, she seemingly had the worst upbringing of everyone. If Sarah thought she lacked love because of her mother’s death, she could only imagine how much love Nancy lacked to become the villain she is in the end. It’s easy to hate Nancy because of her actions, but it’s just as easy to feel sorry for her.
The Abuse Of Power
Abuse of power is one of the main themes in The Craft. Sarah’s power is a natural gift that she has to understand and master by the end of the film. She can’t fear it; she can’t worry that she might end up like Nancy, but instead, she must trust herself and trust that she is meant to use the gift that was passed on to her from her mother. Sarah is level-headed and has goodness in her heart, preventing her from using magic to torment and avenge others.
However, Nancy’s power comes from harmful intentions. She felt so powerless in her life that she used magic to fill a void that could never actually be filled by countless spells. Because of this, she craves more and more power and control until she’s so far detached from reality that she ends up in a psych ward at the end of the film. A significant scene happens when the coven does a nighttime ritual, resulting in Nancy walking on water the following morning.
This Jesus parallel tells us that Nancy sees herself as a powerful god, superior to everyone else in the coven. She sees herself as Manon, the god that she worships more than anyone else in the film. However, Nancy actually fears Sarah stepping away from the coven because she knows she and the other witches don’t have any real power without Sarah. Nancy’s power trip is all a facade, which is why Sarah is able to defeat her in the end.
Spirituality In The Craft
There's undeniably a strong spiritual presence in The Craft, and a lot of it comes from quotes from the owner of the magic store. While Nancy worships the higher power, Manon, the owner of the magic store, also acts as a goddess or higher self, helping Sarah channel the energy of Manon in a productive, non harmful way. There are many messages about manifestation as well. The girls often talk about how they make wishes in their minds before they see them come true in their lives. Bonnie, for one, manifests healing in her body, something Joe Dispenza and Louise Hay have spoken about throughout their careers.
The spiritual aspect of the movie also bleeds into the power dynamics. The magic store owner warns the girls that everything they put out will come back to them threefold. She also reminds them to do unto others as they would have others do unto them. This is a common phrase, but it is also potent. If you are constantly expressing negativity and hatred by the law of the universe, this has to come back to you. This goes back to the situation with Chris. Even though Sarah's spell caused him to become obsessed with her and Nancy's magic killed him, his death could also be looked at as a result of how poorly he treated both Sarah and Nancy at school.
“True magic is neither black nor white. It’s both because nature is both. Loving and cruel all at the same time. The only good or bad is in the heart of the witch. Life keeps a balance on its own,”-Magic store owner, The Craft.
We also see this when Bonnie and Rochelle look in the mirror at the film's end. Bonnie sees scars all over her face, while Rochelle sees herself going bald, just like Laura. However, the ending solidifies the film's spiritual message when everyone except Sarah loses their powers. Sarah was the only real witch, to begin with, and when she finally surrenders and invokes the power of Manon, she is able to stop all the evil her friends are partaking in. Because Sarah had goodness in her heart, taking on the power of Manon did not turn her into a narcissistic monster as it did with the others.
As the film ends, Bonnie and Rochelle admit they no longer have their powers and then doubt that Sarah has any either. However, Sarah proves them wrong by causing a tree branch to fall and nearly hit them. She wasn't trying to hurt them; we've already learned that she has no intentions of doing that. She was simply warning them that she still has her powers because she was the only one with real power, to begin with, and that no one has any authority over her anymore now that she's stepped into her truth.