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Yesflix/Noflix: The Craft or Vampire Academy?

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MV5BMTM2MDAzMTc4OF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTY0MTg5MQ@@._V1_SX640_SY720_Here’s a piece of information I hold no shame over but will probably make the rest of my opinions seem, well, invalid: I don’t hate the first Twilight film. Yes, it’s sexist, badly made, poorly scripted and the plot only works if you make assumptions about how each character would feel at a certain time, but that first film has a charm to it. That charm being that it was a high-budget teen romance film of the kind we don’t often see these days. In the 80’s and 90’s there was a spat of attempts to capture those hazy days of teen life that come altogether too close to representing what it’s like to be 16 and not be understood by anyone except the bands coming out of your stereo. And somewhere along on the way, they just went out of vogue, and Twilight was a nice way of reliving watching those films, even if it mostly amplified their negative qualities and could’ve at least tossed us a bone in the form of meaningful romantic connection and not obsessive, life-altering infatuation.
One of the most irritating side-effects of Twilight, though, is that in its wake, every Tom, Dick and Harry has taken it upon themselves to make a high-school set adage to teen angst, rebellion and cherry popping played out against the backdrop of some form of ancient powers making their way in society. Funnily enough, one of those has turned into one of the biggest franchises still running (Hunger Games), but most revel in the periphery of the Summer/Winter blockbuster seasons as stop gaps on the calendar. Thanks to Netflix, these fodder for the bargain bin have another chance at assaulting the senses and driving one to the nearest off license in the need of a memory cleanser, and it also gives a gateway for anyone who didn’t get the classic teen-defining films the first time around a chance to ponder where it all went wrong, just like the rest of us. Here’s one of each!

Yesflix – The Craft

“You girls watch out for those weirdos!”

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The term ‘stone-cold 90’s classic’ can only literally be used for a small list of films, and The Craft is one of them. Taking inspiration from the previous years Clueless, The Craft takes the struggle of surviving the classist society of a Los Angeles inner-city high school and infuses it with the corruption that otherworldly powers can have on young minds – all with a cool grunge/neo-goth soundtrack to put on the icing on the proverbial cake of ‘alternative.’ For the uninitiated, The Craft follows Sarah (Robin Tunney) as she moves to LA and has to start at a new school. In this new educational setting, she happens upon three other outsides, Nancy (Fairuza Balk), Rochelle (Rachel True) and Bonnie (Neve Campbell), who all slowly gravitate towards her, noticing and sensing her ‘abilities.’ Sarah’s a witch, and so are Nancy, Rochelle and Bonnie, and conspicuously, they’ve an opening for a fourth to help grow their powers that has Sarah’s name all over it.
Besides being endlessly quotable and filled with sweet imagery that continues to define adolescent bedrooms to this day, The Craft does a rare thing of managing to balance analogy against tangibility. What each of the girls suffer from is something very real, with bullying, self-worth, body image and wanting someone you can’t have all being represented, and when that mixes with the cold, hard truth that getting the changes that you want can often change your life for the worse, the results are very resonant. It’s true, being a teenager can be a truly horrible experience if you’re in anyway not ‘normal,’ but it’s also true that the quick fixes we yearn for without knowing anything of the world are the ones that remove from us who we are and make us into people we never wanted to be. Despite some pretty blatant narrative fluffs, The Craft is one of those films that makes being a little different a lot bearable.

Fans of Clueless, Pretty Little Liars and The Breakfest Club will love this!

Noflix – Vampire Academy

MV5BMTUyOTI0MzUyM15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMzI2MzU0MDE@._V1_SY1200_CR90,0,630,1200_AL_Take Twilight, then Harry Potter, then the aforementioned The Craft, then a little bit of Underworld, and you have the basic concept and outline of Vampire Academy. Have all the film-making prowess of your favorite pornographic provider, and you have the final product of Vampire Academy. Opening on two female characters and proceeding to slip and slide downwards, what follows is a descent into madness as a vampiric mythology is explained, a Hogwarts for the humanly challenged explored and a set of drab characters and locations is introduced, before all of which is thrown out the window and the story does whatever the hell the writers felt like doing at that particular time. Usually good looking characters just talking monotonously at each other in an attempt at garnering intensity that dwindles quickly.
There’s actually some potential here, and there still is, in making the Harry Potter for the edgier teenager, but when it’s a film that has vampires just hanging out in the sunlight, and a set of locations that don’t have any geographic relevance to each other, there’s nothing to be had here. Even the action is tenuous, and that’s impressive. What makes Vampire Academy truly disappointing is the fact that director Mark Waters, of Mean Girls fame, yes, THE Mean Girls, made it. What happened to you, Mark!?

Fans of Harry Potter, Interview With The Vampire and Buffy will hate this!

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