The Craft: Legacy Trailer - Every Callback to the Original Film - CBR - Comic Book Resources

The newly released trailer for Blumhouse's The Craft: Legacy is advertising the project as "a continuation of the cult hit," The Craft. However, anyone who has watched the 1996 film will find that this Zoe Lister-Jones-directed sequel appears to have more or less the same plot as the original, with the trailer itself containing several callbacks and uncanny similarities.

With that said, let's look at all of the callbacks to the original film that can be found in the trailer for The Craft: Legacy.

NEW TOWN, NEW HOUSE, NEW SCHOOL

The Craft: Legacy trailer shows a young girl, Lily (Cailee Spaeny), who moves to a new town with her mother (Michelle Monaghan) to live with her stepfather and his two sons. Similarly, In 1996's The Craft, Sarah moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles with her father and stepmother. So, just like Sarah, Lily feels like a fish out of water as she attempts to navigate a new school.

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GETTING EMBARRASSED BY THE MEAN BOY

In The Craft, Sarah was subjected to ridicule when Chris spread the lie that she slept with him after she rebuffed his advances. This is the incident that makes her overlook the weird vibes she gets from Bonnie, Nancy and Rochelle, pushing her to join their coven to exact revenge on him. The Craft: Legacy follows a similar troupe as the school’s mean boy Timmy makes fun of Lily, who is unaware she's having her period and blood is dripping from her pants.

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BEFRIENDING THE WITCHES

Just like in the first film, the three witches are already together and approach the embarrassed Lily with an offer to be her friends. In the 1996 version, Bonnie, Nancy and Rochelle invited Sarah to their spell-casting after school -- Lily gets a similar invitation in the trailer to be the fourth witch in their coven. Additionally, in The Craft, the group had one Black member, Rochelle, who was subjected to racist bullying by white girls on her swimming team. The 2020 “sequel” has the same group aesthetic, though it is left to be seen whether this new character will be motivated to embrace magic because of the same troubles as her predecessor.

CASTING A LOVE SPELL

Another obvious callback to the original film in the trailer is the coven deciding to cast a love spell on Timmy for being mean to Lily in class. The infatuated gleam in his eyes when he looks at Lily hints that he is headed the same way as 1996’s Chris, who got so obsessed with Sarah after he was hit with a spell that he couldn’t think about anything else but her, going as far as to force himself on her.

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“LIGHT AS A FEATHER, STIFF AS A BOARD”

In The Craft, The witches were beyond surprised when they successfully managed to magically lift Rochelle up in the air with just the tip of their fingers. Now, the four witches in The Craft: Legacy’s trailer are as equally astonished when they attempt it while chanting the same line from the first film -- “light as a feather, stiff as a board.”

THE SNAKES ARE BACK

In the trailer, in a blink-and-miss frame, a snake can be seen slithering away at a fast pace as the witches realize that their powers come at a steep price. The Craft’s Nancy had a weird fascination with snakes, even using a large amount of them to scare Sarah into committing suicide towards the end of the film. Given the surprising number of similarities the 2020 version already shares with the original film, the presence of the viper may hint at yet another unhinged, psychotic witch in the coven.

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“WE ARE THE WEIRDOS, MISTER!”

In the trailer, when David Duchovny’s character warns about there being "weirdos" around to the quartet of girls wandering the streets, Lily responds with a line lifted straight from the original film: “We are the weirdos, mister.” In the 1996 version, the dialogue was said by Nancy Downs after the girls got off from a bus near a secluded area and the conductor warned them to be cautious of the strange people roaming the streets.

NANCY DOWNS

At one point in the trailer, Lily holds up a polaroid of Nancy while one of the other characters can be heard explaining the rule for those using The Craft -- if the user becomes dangerous to themselves or others, they will be stripped of their magic by being "bound." In the 1996 film, Nancy was bound by Sarah for exploiting her magic and was seen in a mental asylum by the end of the film. While this inclusion may make it look like The Craft: Legacy is picking after the events of the first film, in light of the above similarities, it feels more like a callback.

Directed by Zoe Lister-Jones, The Craft stars Michelle Monaghan, David Duchovny, Cailee Spaeny, Gideon Adlon, Lovie Simone, Zoey Luna, and Nicholas Galitzine. Blumhouse's remake of The Craft will be available to buy or rent Oct. 27 on Amazon Prime Video.

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Apeksha Bagchi (60 Articles Published)

Apeksha is a passionate content creator with years of experience in the media and online publishing industry. A full-time freelance writer now, she can cover anything under the sun and harbours a secret Vampire Diaries crush. And when she is not breaking her back by typing on her laptop for hours, you can likely find her curled up on the couch, with a murder mystery book in her hands and her cat dozing on her lap.