PRACTICAL MAGIC 2 (2026)

Decades after Sally Owens (Sandra Bullock) found what seemed like her happily ever after with the detective investigating her sister Gillian’s (Nicole Kidman) boyfriend’s disappearance, new trouble arrives when the death watch beetle—whose clicking announces a witch’s impending death—is heard in their home.

Their Aunt Jet (Dianne Wiest) is due to pass away on her birthday, leaving behind a book that may finally break the curse cast by a Pilgrim ancestor: that no Owens woman may love a man without him dying tragically. (If ever there were a case for political lesbianism, I suppose this is it.)

Following the death of the last man she loved, Sally charmed her daughters into forgetting their magical heritage so they could lead “normal” lives. Surprise, surprise: since she didn’t charm them to be asexual, young Kylie (Joey King) falls for a fellow student, Gideon (Xolo Maridueña), who is struck into a coma whilst cycling to bring her flowers.

Desperate to resurrect him, she travels to England with Aunt Jet’s book to search for the Owens family’s roots. Sally and Gillian are in hot pursuit, along the way hooking up with a hunky occultist, Ian Wright (Lee Pace). Meanwhile, Aunt Frances (Stockard Channing) and the other daughter, Antonia (Maisie Williams), are handily sidelined by making Antonia a medical student and confining them both to Gideon’s sickroom.

Practical Magic 2 is fairly innocuous IP exploitation. The premise is poorly thought out and makes Bullock’s character look like a dumb ox at best and reckless with her children’s lives at worst. It’s the result of rehashing her arc from the first film, as though she hasn’t learned a thing in 30 years. Looking back, what made the first film a cult classic was an earthiness to its sisterly dynamic that felt real amidst the fantasy.

No such reality intrudes here. I’m not sure why they decided to pack the leads off to England, beyond appealing to audiences who never got over Harry Potter. I did get a laugh from a journey where the train looked straight out of the 1930s—no grotty National Express for these witches.

As you can tell from my summary of the inciting incidents, the film is chock-a-block with plot. Overloaded, in fact, in the way sequels tend to be. Not long ago, I watched Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (2005)—the follow-up to Bullock’s Miss Congeniality (2000)—on Netflix. It suffers from the same problem as Practical Magic 2: it throws fistfuls of new characters and situations at you while simply repeating the last movie’s beats, making it feel like a badly told version of the original.

The film also does that thing I hate in trashy fantasy: giving the villain a tragic backstory to motivate them, but evincing no compassion or nuance. Not that tragedy justifies evil, but if you’re going to give your baddie a traumatic past, treating them as a one-dimensional antagonist makes the heroes seem mean-spirited.

“No one ever came to save me,” they whine at one point. Well, aren’t they right? All that was needed was to cut the gloating from the heroes’ triumph. If you’re going to have a flat, uncomplicated villain, don’t make them sympathetic. Though this might be more of a “me” issue than anything a general audience would care about.

Fans of the original Practical Magic may know it was hardly critically revered, with many considering it a mawkish jumble of tones. For me, though, it’s a fun medley of tropes and themes—incorporating Gothic horror, romantic comedy, cosy fantasy, and family saga—that fits into a very particular niche of “girls’ night” films dealing with challenging subjects (domestic violence and social isolation) in a cosily simplistic way. Other examples include Dirty Dancing (1987) and Steel Magnolias (1989). Whether or not you like that movie, directed by Griffin Dunne and written by Robin Swicord, Akiva Goldsman, and Adam Brooks, Practical Magic at least felt like it sprang from a genuine need to tell a story, based on Alice Hoffman’s novel of the same name.

Practical Magic 2 is also based on a Hoffman book, her sequel The Book of Magic (the movie’s title feels oddly retro; I wouldn’t have been surprised if, like other reboots, it was just called Practical Magic again). Perhaps the book shares similar problems with the film, directed this time by Susanne Bier and written by Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett, and Kelly Marcel. The writing-to-directing gender ratio is exactly inverted this time—three women and one man, compared to the original’s three men and one woman. Not that it matters: no amalgamation of human attributes could give this pale retread life.

A sequel to Practical Magic cried out for a lower-key approach—a cosy, small-town tale where the daughters find themselves drawn to the same man. Instead, Bier and Goldsman (the only returning writer) go all Fantastic Beasts with it. Its tedious plotting and shallow atmosphere are very much in line with those post-Harry Potter films, essentially becoming a daytime soap opera with expensive VFX.

It tries to incorporate themes of sisterhood and overcoming trauma, because that’s expected of every woman-centred film now. I love a female empowerment story, but films like this only reach a Spice Girls level of feminism, where meaningful discussions between female characters are replaced with slogans. The film is half-hearted about it anyway: it brings up an Owens ancestor being raped by the lord of the manor before being burned as a witch, and the resulting child having to watch her burn. It’s a lot to digest, yet the thread is discarded almost as soon as it’s introduced.

The acting is fine. Sandra Bullock has made good films, though she seems intent on taking the trashier end of projects offered to her, rarely challenging herself beyond basic heroine roles. Nicole Kidman goes through the motions, as do Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing. The younger Owens sisters are adequate, and Lee Pace is a serviceable hunk.

USA | 2026 | 130 MINUTES | 2.39:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Susanne Bier.
writers: Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett & Kelly Marcel (based on the novel ‘The Book of Magic’ by Alice Hoffman).
starring: Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Joey King, Lee Pace, Maisie Williams, Xolo Maridueña, Dianne Wiest & Stockard Channing.