October Horror Challenge 2017 #6: "Practical Magic"

I watched a really good movie this morning, and then I slipped into a mood that comes often for me during this challenge, where I don't want to watch another movie for fear it will be terrible and curse me to only terrible movies for the rest of the challenge. It's silly, I know, but it happens when I sacrifice sleep in order to cram 100 movies into one month. I don't want to waste my time. Regardless, I thought it would be a good time to break out a favorite movie, one I already knew would be good.

My love affair with this movie started in high school, during my Work Ethics class, when our teacher let us veg out for our final class one year and rented a movie for us to watch. It happened to be this movie, because it was the only one we could all agree on, because it had magic, which was cool, and it wouldn't just be a sappy love story. Plus it was based on a book, so that gave it literary street cred. We watched it, and the sappiest love story was me falling in love with this movie. I've watched it many times over the years, and as stupid and cheesy as it sounds, watching the movie always feels sort of like coming home.

In case you don't know the story (and you really should run out and watch this movie if you've never seen it before) this is the story of two sisters raised by their aunt's after their parents die. The girls come from a long line of women who have the gift of magic. People are afraid of them and bully them for being witches, but their aunts insist that their magical ability is a gift they should cherish. The girls grow up and grow apart, but life and love and tragedy bring them back together and they must use their magical gifts to fight against something evil.

This movie evokes feelings of love and sisterhood and family and home, but there's plenty of darkness here, too. There's death and abuse and evil haunting people who can't let go of the past. I don't care what anyone else says, this is a great love story, but it's a horror movie too. Light shines brighter when there's darkness behind it. This movie has great performances from some of my favorite actresses (Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Stockard Channing, Dianne Wiest, even a young Evan Rachel Wood) and I just pretty much love everything about it. The best part is that it reminds me it's ok to be different, weird,  and magical. Sometimes I need reminding of that.