Visiting Salem for the first time earlier this year, I noticed a fascinating juxtaposition: it exists as a monument to the Salem Witch Trials, a horrific injustice in which women were falsely accused of being witches and sent to their deaths. Those women weren’t really witches, and Salem today stands as a reminder of the wrong done to them. But at the same time, everything about modern Salem sends the message that being a witch is not only real, but also awesome. You can dress up as a witch and go there on Halloween, and in the gift shop of the Salem Witch Museum, you can buy a book of spells and incantations.
The Practical Magic movies offer something of a similar juxtaposition: Being a witch comes attached to a horrible curse, but it’s also real. The original Practical Magic, released in 1998, was a poorly-paced, oddly-structured ode to sisterhood in which Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock played two sisters in Massachusetts who were descended from witches—presumably from the Salem Witch Trials—and were afflicted with a curse in which anyone who fell in love with them would die.
Almost 30 years later, there’s a sequel. The first Practical Magic was a moderate hit, and I wasn’t aware that many people had affection for it. But since both of its leads, Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock, remain movie stars after three decades, it was made. (This represents Bullock’s first movie role in almost four years, as her life partner passed away in 2023.) They’re fun together, and the actresses playing their daughters are appealing. But the new film has some of the same pacing issues as the original, and its story isn’t strong enough to justify a sequel.
To give you an idea of how long ago the first Practical Magic was, Nicole Kidman was still married to Tom Cruise. She shot it right after completing Eyes Wide Shut, yet Practical Magic was released eight months before Stanley Kubrick’s final film, which arrived the following summer.
When we meet the Owens sisters again, the curse remains in effect, and because all of their male partners have died, the family’s all female, consisting of Sally (Bullock), Gillian (Kidman), and Sally’s two daughters, who have been recast with Joey King and Maisie Williams, two actresses who aren’t close to the right age for how much time has passed. Also still around are the sisters’ two quirky aunts, played in rare modern-day performances by Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest. The plot follows the characters as they try to break the curse, a process that involves an ancient book of spells, a visit to England, and the help of a handsome academic/sorcerer/possible love interest (Lee Pace).
Griffin Dunne directed the first film, but this time it’s the Danish arthouse dynamo Susanne Bier, who earlier directed Bullock in the Netflix smash Bird Box. What goes wrong? A lot. There isn’t much in the way of laughs. The rules of the magic and curses are too complex and arbitrary; I’d watched the first movie earlier in the day, and still wasn’t sure I understood them. The villain’s introduced, reveals himself, and is vanquished in about 15 minutes, while the plot resolves itself and then drags on for too long. And Maisie Williams, the Game of Thrones actress who hadn’t been in a major movie in a while, barely participates in the plot.
Hocus Pocus, another movie from the 1990s about witches that wasn’t great, also got a sequel a while back, and The Craft did too. I guess people just love witches, as well as the chance to see Nicole Kidman in something that isn’t a sleazy streaming mini-series about rich people having affairs.