STAGE FRIGHT

Girls perform in a cursed play in the North American launch of the Creepers series.

After a gotcha opening in which hideous witches stir up a foul brew (using the freshly severed finger of a preteen boy) is revealed to be the first act of a play in rehearsal, there’s a long dry patch while the plot is established. Melissa, Jo, and Jenny play the roles of three witches in the school play, Oh Spirits Obey Us. When a furious Jenny blows off steam by wishing harm on the school bully—who promptly breaks both legs and falls into a coma—the girls realize that lots of their up-until-now-mild wishes have been coming true. They decide it’s connected to the play and determine to pay a visit to the playwright’s conveniently nearby grave. The girls are separated at the cemetery. Melissa and Jo receive a woodenly expository speech from the playwright’s ghost, warning that unless they sabotage the play they’ll conjure up the witches for real on opening night. Meanwhile, Jenny encounters the witches in a mausoleum, a scene disappointingly undermined by a nebulous, ungrounded setting (readers will wonder, among other things, just how big it is). The three regroup and rewrite their lines in the performance. Just as the witches are interchangeable with one another, the protagonists are indistinguishable, unoriginally mooning over boys and disliking math. Characters default to White.

A weak and unsatisfying story.