Kids These Days Don't Break Generational Curses Anymore
Hey all! Welcome to the fourth and final week of the 2025 Spooky Season Spooktacular! This week is gonna be some lighthearted witches, with Practical Magic today, and then Hocus Pocus on Friday! Happy reading, stay spooky, and go to the library!
When people think of witch movies, they most often think of Practical Magic. It is generally remembered as a fun, lighthearted romp about sisterhood and community. Which there is no denying it is. But Practical Magic is a very complex movie in many ways that don’t begin and end with the aesthetic.
Practical Magic is a very beloved movie, a classic that is often watched on or near Halloween as tradition. It is most loved by women (which should come as no surprise, and I mean that positively) for its depiction of sisterhood and community among women. But the thing is, there’s a lot more there, even in that sisterhood.
First of all, Practical Magic deviated from the grand tradition of old, haggard witches. Yes, the grandmothers are vital characters, but the main characters are played by Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman at ages 34 and 31, respectively, looking about 25 the whole time. Also distinct from most (but not all) witch movies up until that 1998, the witches are not the villains. There aren’t really villains per se, except for the zombie of the man they kill, which we’ll get to later. Really, it’s about women supporting women, despite any past adversity or dislike. The other moms in town shun Sally (Sandra Bullock) for, well, being a witch whose husband died of a generational curse, but eventually help her exorcise her sister, then even help clean up with those good housewife skills they’ve so coveted. Practical Magic serves as a nice break from pitting women against each other, and the typical Scottish play-style witches around a cauldron and, in doing so, allows witches to be women, and women to be people in a way that broke some new horror ground. And is also maybe why it didn’t originally do so well at the box office. But who’s to say, really? Just, everyone remembers those bits. The scene where Sally initiates the phone tree, where the women help sweep up the salt, and, of course, the midnight margaritas, are what people remember, and tend to bring up when talking about the movie. As well as the heartthrob, wish-conjured sheriff, but he’s also a topic for later. The thing people don’t seem to remember, and I was honestly shocked by the first time I watched it, is how truly dark Practical Magic is.
I mentioned this earlier on, but I feel it is worth going into more depth now about the fact that the Owens sisters do, in fact, murder a man. In a particularly horrifying set of circumstances, I might add. The man in question is Jimmy, Gillian (Nicole Kidman)’s boyfriend. He’s an absolute piece of abusive shit, and this is brought to a head when Gillian calls Sally to come help her because he’s hurt her really badly and she needs to get away. He ends up getting in the car, where Sally poisons him with deadly nightshade, then the sisters attempt to reanimate him, bury him in the yard when they think they’ve failed, and then have to kill him again as a zombie. And exorcise him from Gillian after he possesses her. It’s all very gruesome. What’s particularly interesting to me about all of this is that people still remember it, and market it, in some cases, as a rom-com of sorts. Because of course everyone remembers the line at the end about lavender, and them all jumping off the roof and flying, and the midnight margaritas and everything, but no one remembers how the midnight margaritas scene ends with the horrible realization that Jimmy is not only a zombie, but a zombie that knows where they live, because he’s there too. This, to me, feels like if the only thing people mentioned about The Conjuring was that final scene where the mother walks out into the sunlight and all her bruises fade away. People want so badly to have this sweet, witchy rom-com that they omit all the darkness that is the main plot points of the movie. Which really speaks to the lack of witch movies that really are just nice. I don’t mean there shouldn’t be conflict, because of course you need conflict, I just want to know why witches can’t have nice things.
Which brings me to my next thought about this movie, and that is about Officer Gary Hallet, Sally’s literal dream man. He is, of course, your typical heartthrob - good with kids, whimsical in nature but not too much, authoritative, generically good-looking, etc. - but he fits kind of weirdly into the narrative. He meets Sally because he’s investigating the disappearance of the man she murdered in the name of protecting her sister, and ends up almost having to take her away from her children because of it. Also, it seems to me like he didn’t end up having that much free will in any of the goings-on of their relationship, but I digress. My thing about Gary is that he feels forced. It’s almost like some administrative somewhere in Hollywood went ‘yes, I know it’s about women and their community or whatever, but I need you to understand that there does have to be a man’. And this might just be a me thing, who knows. But I think that, in a movie that is, at its very core, about sisterhood and its various forms, sticking a police officer love interest in there for good measure doesn’t feel quite right. This is part of the whole ‘why can’t witches have nice things’ idea. Why can’t witches (and women, for that matter) have things for themselves? Why must there always be a man? And I want to be so clear that I’m not saying this in any kind of trans-exclusionary blah blah blah, I just want to know why studio executives always feel the need to stick a man in to be a love interest because god forbid women have their own lives. Even though Practical Magic is, genuinely at heart, very feminist, it sure does have some weird things to say about women in relation to men. The idea that the witchcraft of a generational curse kills every man that has a chance at happiness with one of the Owens women, the relationships Gillian has with men, the fact that Officer Hallet is a police officer…I could go on. But, what the film is shaky on in terms of feminism, it tends to get right in witchcraft.
Practical Magic is, in fact, one of the most accurate depictions of witchcraft I’ve ever seen in film. All those little ‘superstitions’ at the end, the old wives’ tales…that’s what witchcraft is. It’s community. It’s using the elementary school phone tree to help with the exorcism your sister needs because you killed her abuser and now he’s possessed her. It’s your crazy aunts taking you in, even so many years later. It’s being the town freak no matter what you do, and accepting it eventually because it’s in your blood. It’s throwing salt over your shoulder three times at breakfast the day of your pitch meeting for your book (not that anyone I know has done that).
It’s important to remember that under all the darkness and murder and aestheticism and men who didn’t need to be there, that’s what it’s all about, really. Is finding community and not isolating yourself from it for any reason. Because isolation makes you weak, unsupported in your time of need. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, but every movie means different things to different people. If you like Practical Magic for the witchcraft, or the murder, or the feminism, or even the romantic aspect of it, hell, even the aesthetic aspect of it, we’re all in the same boat of liking Practical Magic. Because it’s a beautiful movie however you look at it, and an important one, too. It let witches not be frightening for the first time in a long time, letting them be the women they are in the process. It didn’t pit women against each other so much as it showed why they should support one another, and that’s an indescribably vital thing, especially in a genre that isn’t known for doing that. Practical Magic is about community, plain and simple, and, at the end of the day, that’s all there is.
Thanks for reading, all! Happy Halloween week, and look forward to Friday for some Hocus Pocus action! Happy reading, stay spooky, and remember that there’s always community for you somewhere! ⭐🧹🍹🔪
