Trailer Park: The Craft

Movie
The Craft, released May 3 1996

Trailer Synopsis
A quartet of teenage outcasts discover black magic and use it to change their hair color, fly around, make snakes come out of the bathroom sink and strike a vengeful blow against Skeet Ulrich.

Does It Honestly Represent the Movie?
It sure does! The Craft follows Sarah (Robin Tunney) as she moves to a new high school and starts to hang out with a handful of girls who have an informal coven. There’s de facto leader Nancy (Fairuza Balk), anti-social Bonnie (Neve Campbell) and charismatic Rochelle (Rachel True). They all have tragic backstories and mildly terrible home lives, but they find their nascent witch powers can grow exponentially now that they have a fourth. The movie begins as a bit of teen girl wish fulfillment and ends up becoming a rote thriller, but the trailer does a nice job of suggesting the sheer level of mayhem that runs through this thing. Once they gain access to greater power, they all go completely bugnuts—particularly Nancy, who straight up murders her stepdad so she and her mother can collect on life insurance. Once Sarah starts to feel guilty about some of the stuff her witch friends have done, it becomes a showdown between she and Nancy, with a lot of glamour spells and an invaded dream or two. None of that plot is suggested in the trailer, but it doesn’t really matter.

Does It Make You Want to See the Movie?
Hell yes! The Craft wanted to lure in audiences with the promise of hot teens casting kooky spells, and that’s exactly what the trailer delivers. Interestingly, it also hints at a sense of humor that the movie itself doesn’t really possess. The final stinger, with a bus driver imploring the girls to watch out for weirdos and Nancy replying “We are the weirdos, mister,” is a really clever and playful bit. But that’s about the only time The Craft allows itself to have much fun, as the rest of the movie plays out more like a supernatural Lifetime feature than a knowing romp. The Craft arrived just slightly too early to play its horror tropes with any kind of self-awareness, as Scream didn’t open and reconfigure the way audiences thought about genre cliches until later on in ‘96.

What’s Weird About It?
The footage itself is mostly MTV-level quick-cutting between magical stuff happening, but I am utterly in love with the wackiness of the narration. It starts off simple enough, with a description of our protagonists and their place in the high school social dynamic. But then the wordplay shows up! “After years of being on the outside,” the voice says, “four girls are about to discover…the dark side.” Then, following a handful of lightning strikes and some random dagger imagery, the voice is back. “Columbia Pictures welcomes you…to the witching hour!” Oh, thank you for welcoming me, Columbia Pictures! It feels good to be welcomed. I love it when a movie studio welcomes me, almost as much as when they invite me to something. It’s nice that we have this relationship.

Also, the flying-text tagline “Exorcise Your Rites” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in the closing moments of this trailer. It’s almost as though it’s presenting itself like a feminist statement movie, but playfully substituting witchy imagery instead. The way the text comes barreling toward the audience is hilarious to me, for whatever reason. I suppose it’s because the whole endeavor is meant to seem badass, but it’s hard to strike that kind of authoritative stance while you’re twisting yourself into a complicated pun.

That’s the Love Spit Love cover of the Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now?” running through the bulk of the clip, which is only bizarre in retrospect because that tune ended up being the theme song to Charmed, another witch-based entertainment that premiered on the WB network over two years later. At what point did everybody decide that “How Soon Is Now?” was a song about witchcraft? I bet Morrissey hates everything about this.

Speaking of music, this trailer also has a card at the end touting the soundtrack, featuring new music (with a big focus on the word NEW) from Letters to Cleo, Spacehog, Sponge and Tripping Daisy. What a strange cross-section of musical humanity! The soundtrack to The Craft also features Matthew Sweet, Our Lady Peace, Heather Nova, Jewel and Juliana Hatfield, and it’s largely pretty solid. I’ve always enjoyed Letters to Cleo’s cover of the Cars “Dangerous Type” and “Spastica” is a top-shelf Elastica b-side.

Does It Spoil the Movie?
Did you think a movie about teenage witchcraft wasn’t going to involve fireballs and flying through windows and talk of “invoking the spirit”? No, it does not spoil the movie.

Final Analysis
The Craft has been adopted as a sort of camp classic, but it’s not nearly as much fun as it should be. (Neither is the sequel, which is a total drag.) But the trailer to The Craft makes it seem like a completely insane head rush of a movie, and that’s the mark of an excellent teaser. This trailer makes me want to watch The Craft, a movie I know I’m just OK with and somewhat bored by for long stretches. But those images of Fairuza Balk making crazy faces and holding ceremonial daggers while Richard Butler croons “I am human and I need to be loved” are just too much for me to handle. The Craft has indeed cast its spell upon me. 9/10