PRACTICAL MAGIC

Take two appealing and beautiful actresses, two cute little girls, a couple of older respected actresses, a strong leading man, and combine them with a romantic tale about good and evil, and you might have the recipe for a successful movie that even movie critics can love. If, however, you turn the women into modern-day witches and make the leading man fall in love with one of the beautiful actresses, then you’ll also have a good piece of propaganda for paganism. That, regrettably, is just what has happened with the new movie PRACTICAL MAGIC starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman.

In the movie, Bullock and Kidman play two orphaned sisters raised by their two aunts, played by Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest. The four women come from a long line of witches. According to the story in the movie, the witches have a genetic talent for casting spells. Their sorcery, however, carries a price and a curse: any man they fall in love with is doomed to an untimely death.

Bullock, who plays Sally, tries to distance herself from the family talent and curse by building a normal, magic-free life. Kidman, who plays Gillian, embraces her powers and becomes a sexually promiscuous woman who leaves a trail of broken hearts in her wake. When Gillian meets Jimmy, a malevolent drifter played by Goran Visnjic, she unwittingly sets off a chain of occult, explosive events that brings police officer Gary Hallett, played by Aidan Quinn, into their lives and into Sally’s heart. Hallet is looking for Jimmy, who is the likely suspect in a serial murder case. Sally and Gillian have killed Jimmy in self-defense, however, and buried him in the yard to their aunts’ cozy house. Eventually, Jimmy’s “ghost” possesses Gillian’s body, and the aunts and Sally must seek the help of the local townswomen, who have so far shunned the family of witches, to perform a “white magick” exorcism.

PRACTICAL MAGIC is a well-made, funny and exciting movie that sells the idea that people who use witchcraft are doing nothing wrong. Many teenagers and even many children may want to see this movie, which will appeal to many people because of its emotional story and its spirit of fighting for the underdog. Americans love to root for the underdog, and PRACTICAL MAGIC plays on audience’s sympathies for the way in which witches are often treated as outcasts. There is even a scene early in the movie of Puritans, including a Christian minister, trying to hang one of Sally and Gillian’s ancestors.

That is why PRACTICAL MAGIC is a particularly dangerous movie. Not only does it appeal to a popular misconception that the underdog is always right, it also appeals to the idea that anyone who opposes a nasty murderer, even if they use witchcraft to do it, is fighting for the greater good. Therefore, the movie is saying, everyone, including all Christians, must support that witch in everything else she does, even if doing so violates other laws that God has laid out in the Bible.

It is interesting to note that, at one point, Kidman’s character actually begs God for help against Jimmy’s demonic spirit. Audiences should not be fooled by this. As Bob and Gretchen Passantino point out in their booklet “Satanism,” published by Zondervan Publishing House in 1995, modern-day witches consider the concept of God to be simply “the male aspect of divine or spiritual reality; the male aspect of life; usually the consort of the goddess in ritual worship.” Thus, modern-day witchcraft is actually a perversion of Christianity. This perversion has gradually developed over centuries of history, the Passantinos note. While it is true that many Christians between 1490 and 1840 used torture to get people to confess to acts of alleged witchcraft, the amount of people actually executed in Europe for such alleged crimes has been greatly exaggerated. In reality, records indicate that Europeans executed only about 60,000 people for witchcraft.

In conclusion, don’t let your children, friends, acquaintances, or relatives be fooled by the evil worldview that permeates this admittedly entertaining movie. And don’t let your fellow citizens be fooled either. The truth about God, witchcraft, the occult, and paganism will set you free. True love will not delight in the false, evil worldview that the filmmakers of PRACTICAL MAGIC are trying to promote.