Twenty-eight years ago, Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman made one of the most beloved movies of their careers. Practical Magic has become the go-to story for wannabe Wiccans looking for a blend of the whimsical and goth. It’s the type of movie that feels like it was made both to be rewatched on Halloween and with your mom and sister at home for the winter holidays.
The love Practical Magic inspired has led to a legacy sequel, out on Sept. 10. Directed by Susanne Bier, Practical Magic 2 continues the story of sisters Sally (Bullock) and Gillian Owens (Kidman) while introducing a new generation of witches: Sally’s daughters, Kylie (Joey King) and Antonia (Maisie Williams). As the girls grow, they reckon with the curse that has plagued their family for centuries: Any man who falls in love with an Owens woman will meet an untimely death. When Kylie, the eldest daughter, discovers dark abilities of her own, she embarks on a quest to understand her powers, with her family seeking help from unlikely allies in hopes of ending the curse once and for all.
As part of Polygon’s Fall Preview, we’ve got an exclusive image to share, showing Kylie looking through some old texts handed to her by the warlock Thomas Lockland (Solly McLeod).
How did Practical Magic earn a follow-up nearly 30 years after the original? Here’s how we got here.
Practical Magic’s hard-won cult status
Directed by actor-turned-filmmaker Griffin Dunne and based on the novel by Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic follows sisters Sally and Gillian, one bookish, one rebellious, living in a small town in Massachusetts with their aunts (Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest). The Owens women come from a long line of witches, with the film’s expansive story taking us to their origins in Salem and then to the present, following the sisters’ growth, relationships, and hardships, including the toll of the family curse.
Practical Magic came out in the midst of a witchy decade, with movies and shows like The Craft and Charmed already established in the mainstream. It starred two of the most exciting actresses of their generation, with Bullock already having box office hits like The Net and Speed, and Kidman poised as one of the biggest rising international stars. Still, the movie disappointed at the box office and was met with middling critical reviews. It was only once it became available on home video that it found its audience, which embraced many of the elements and quirks that critics disliked.
“We thought, ‘This is going to be such an amazing film. People are going to love it,’” said Bullock in a recent interview with Variety. “And then it got quiet. It got quiet. They were like, ‘How many women in a film do you need? How many tones do you need? What kind of film is this?’”
While marketed as a “chick flick,” Practical Magic is much more unwieldy than that. Romance plays a key part of the film, but these relationships are supplementary; the true heart of the story lies in the sisters’ bond and their complex connection to their aunts and abilities as witches. While Sally is the more magically gifted of the two, she’s the most fearful of her skills, and hates how it singles her out in town. Gillian takes the opposite approach, basking in her uniqueness.
Another sticking point for critics was the film’s jumpy tone, pivoting from melodramatic sequences, like the death of Sally’s husband and its aftermath, to surprisingly dark moments between Gillian and her abusive boyfriend Jimmy (Goran Visnjic), to the playful scenes that the movie is most remembered for, like the Midnight Margaritas party. Upon a rewatch, I had forgotten that Sally and Gillian are taken hostage by a terrifying Jimmy, and felt genuinely struck by the film’s heel turn from a bubbly coming-of-age story into something much darker.
But the great thing about Practical Magic is that it takes these shifts in stride, leavening them with humor and quirkiness. One of the movie’s most memorable sequences centers on the revival of Jimmy’s corpse, showing Sally and Gillian bickering their way through the spell, using whipped cream to paint a pentagram on his chest.
Despite its unevenness, Practical Magic’s charm is inescapable. Set in a stunning Victorian-era house located by the sea, the bulk of the film is made up of its characters moving through its wooden rooms and creaky grand staircases, cooking breakfast and brewing love spells. The home is a Gothic dream, with the color and the film grain jumping out of the screen.
But it’s Kidman and Bullock, captured at their most timeless, who anchor it – their chemistry as sisters is still the film’s beating heart. It makes for an endlessly rewatchable experience. Is Practical Magic a comedy, a drama, or even a horror? It doesn’t matter. You just want to keep coming back.
Practical Magic 2 premieres in theaters on Sept 10.
