More Practical, Less Magic: Practical Magic 2
The turn of the century gave us no shortage of iconic Halloween media. Hocus Pocus, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Twitches, Beetlejuice, The Craft, and Sabrina The Teenage Witch all defined this eerie era. Thanks to these films, Halloween was no longer limited to only guts and gore (though those certainly have their place), but instead included themes of love, comedy, and drama. One of the most notable movies of this time is Practical Magic. In this film, a chick flick and thriller are intertwined, along with a dash of supernatural folklore. The 2026 sequel was highly anticipated.
If you’ve never had the chance to see the cult-classic, allow me to summarize. The film opens with a Crucible-style explanation of why the Owens family is forever cursed with not being able to keep man (and by “not keep,” I mean he dies). The spell is then traced to the present day, where the two Owens sisters, Gillian and Sally, lose their father because of the curse, and subsequently their mother from a broken heart. The girls move in with their witch Aunts, who give them the sugar filled, bedtime-free childhood straight of their dreams. In order to avoid getting her heart broken like her mother, Sally casts a spell so that she’ll only ever fall in love with a man who has seven unachievable traits, including having different colored eyes, and the ability to ride a pony backwards and flip pancakes mid-air. As they grow up, Gillian runs away with her boyfriend to live independently, but not before reassuring Sally that they will grow old together just like they planned. Sally becomes depressed, so the Aunts decide to cast a love spell to make her fall for the local produce boy. She marries him, and they have two children. Then he dies. Sally begs the aunts to bring him back to life, but they refuse, saying it would not really be her husband they were bringing back. Accepting her widowed fate, Sally brings her daughters, Anatonia and Kylie, to live with the aunts, but she bans them from magic. Gillian then contacts Sally to come save her, because she’s being abused by her current boyfriend, Jimmy Angelov. In their attempt to get away from Jimmy, they accidentally poison him, and he dies. When an investigator shows up, the sisters must hide their crime. During their cover-up, Sally realizes that the investigator is exactly the man she wished for when she was younger, and this terrifies her. Jimmy’s spirit possesses Gillian, and the aunts must call all the women in the town to form a coven to release her. They are successful, and all curses on the family seem to be lifted. Sally marries Gary, and everyone gets their happy ending.
Practical Magic 2 focuses on the lives of Sally’s daughters, played by Joey King (The Kissing Booth, The Act), and Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones, Dr. Who). Initially, many were upset about the casting choices, especially for the role of Kylie Owens. In response to the decision to cast Joey King instead of the original Kylie from the first film, one Reddit user wrote, “I really don't understand. Evan Rachel Wood [was] perfect and would be perfect for the sequel also. And it's not like she stopped acting, she is an active actress still, so I don't understand the reason of the recasting.” Some speculated that it was a vain choice by Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman to age themselves down by having younger actresses play their children. Others argued that the ages were consistent with the book’s timeline, and that the year each movie was released didn’t necessarily mean that the events were meant to take place in that time period.
As for the girls’ performances, they seemed comfortable in the setting and were able to blend the new generational style along with the classic story very well. There were few notes to give on Maisie’s acting, mostly due to the fact that the few times she was on screen she was checking a pulse. This is fitting because her two main character traits are that she is both a direct replica of Sally and a doctor in training. There is seemingly no reference to the mischievous 7 year old seen in the first film.
Spoiler Alert: but not really because it happens within the first 10 minutes of the film, GARY DIES. Nothing is mentioned about his death except for a scene at the gravesite and the occasional mournful expression from Sandra Bullock. This completely negates the conclusion of the first film. The convent was supposed to dispel all evil magic from the family, but apparently that did not work. Also Gary’s most iconic quote from the film was, "Curses only have power when you believe them. And I don't." Well, I guess the curse did have power, because Gary’s dead now. Sally also makes the decision to erase magic from her daughter’s memories, because shielding them from the supernatural worked out so well the first time. Within the next 10 minutes AUNT JET DIES. We are half an hour in and we’ve already experienced two losses. If that wasn’t enough, the majority of the plot surrounds the coma of Kylie’s boyfriend and her attempts to bring him back after learning that she is a witch. She travels to England and is followed by the concerned Sally and Gillian, who believe she’ll fall into dark magic.
Initially, the choice to move the setting to England would have been disappointing, as the most visually stunning part of the first film was the aunts house. After seeing what they did to the house, however, the change of scenery was relieving. The home transformed from the dark-vintage aesthetic to a show house straight out of Southern Living. The atmosphere is now bright and artificial, not the eerie and dark featured in the previous film. The secondary plot featuring aunt idk and Antonia happens solely in the hospital room (also, how is Kylie getting this much time off of work to sit with her sister’s boyfriend?).
As for costuming, the looks for Gillian and Sally were well thought out, adapting their whimsical style of 1998 to be more reflective of the responsible adults they’ve become. For the younger girls, however, Antonia is rarely seen out of scrubs, while Kylie does have some notable outfits. For the majority of the film, she stays in a blush camisole dress with a pair of boots. This doesn’t seem like the most suitable attire for trekking through the English countryside, but it works. When she finally does change outfits, she’s put in a chartreuse top, an obvious reference to Gillian’s dress of the same color from the first movie.
The film’s main drawback is its explicit use of magic. The charm of the original movie came from its subtle, almost magic-trick style of the sister’s magic. Almost nothing was CGI, and spells included the lighting of candles and self-stirring spoons. In the sequel, an animated, holographic mist is used every time someone performs magic, taking away from the beloved campiness of Practical Magic.
Sequels are not a new concept in 21st century Hollywood, and many see them as a cheap money-making scheme, a way to exploit the beauty of a classic film for the pure “nostalgia” of it. While having a strong concept, Practical Magic 2 still falls into the same plot-repeating, style changing category.
