The only face missing is Evan Rachel Wood<\/a>, absent from the line-up as Sally\u2019s eldest daughter Kylie. When Joey King<\/a> got the role, loyal fans were dismayed. The character\u2019s age was cited by the director<\/a> which, given that Wood (who is 39) played Kylie in the original film, makes no sense.<\/p>\n I hope the public fallout<\/a> from Wood\u2019s abuse allegations against Marilyn Manson<\/a> didn\u2019t factor into the decision not to rehire her. If Hollywood is policing survivors to avoid PR issues, it would put the film\u2019s feminist ethos firmly at odds with the industry that created it.<\/p>\n I decided to wait and see whether I cared about Wood\u2019s omission once I\u2019d seen the film \u2013 and I did care. Not because King\u2019s performance isn\u2019t great, but because casting Wood as an older Kylie could have brought nuance and continuity to a flimsy story.<\/p>\n What made the original Practical Magic work was the fans\u2019 love for it. An adaptation of the 1995 novel by Alice Hoffman, it was a slow burn: the reviews were lukewarm in 1998, and Bullock herself said it needed \u201cto marinate\u201d.<\/p>\n But new audiences fell in love with sisters Sally and Gillian Owens. They belong to a lineage of Massachusetts witches burdened by a curse whereby any man who falls in love with them dies early.<\/p>\n Darker undertones were present in the original film, though softened by an appropriate pinch of cartoonishness. After an abusive lover of Gillian\u2019s is accidentally killed and resurrected as a malevolent spirit, the sisters must rely on their aunts and a newly formed coven of local women to exorcise the entity and break the family curse.<\/p>\n Over the years, Practical Magic became a beloved autumnal perennial. Though by no means a masterpiece, the film tapped into the zeitgeist \u2013 a yearning for the simplicity of a pagan matriarchal past, wrapped in a frothy, escapist package to enjoy whenever women wearied of living in a world designed for men. <\/p>\n Not hiring Wood exposes Hollywood\u2019s ageism. The industry is eager to commercialise nostalgia, yet the result is a film that could never fully belong to fans or honour the sisterhood theme it trades on.<\/p>\n Wood has been through the mill and is now a seasoned actor. That human complexity is missing from the sequel; her presence could have implicitly supplied it. <\/p>\n The second film is set 25 years later. Sally Owens (Bullock) has hidden her family\u2019s witchcraft from her grown daughters, Kylie (King) and Antonia (Maisie Williams<\/a>). However, the fatal ancestral love curse strikes again when Kylie\u2019s boyfriend Gideon (Xolo Maridue\u00f1a<\/a>) is critically injured.<\/p>\n Kylie flees to England to find a cure. To save the next generation, Sally, Gillian and the aunts, Jet (Wiest) and Franny (Channing), must also cross the Atlantic, team up with an academic warlock (Lee Pace<\/a>), and confront dark forces.<\/p>\nFollowing up a cult favourite<\/h2>\n
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