A.V. Club is framing 2026 as “the year of the coven” for a reason: these movies treat women gathering together not as a cute aesthetic, but as a contested survival strategy in a world that’s increasingly hostile to women and our autonomy. The outlet points to a stack of pressures behind the urgency, including the loss of reproductive rights, rising violence against women, backlash against the #MeToo movement, and disinvestment in women in the entertainment industry. Against that backdrop, witchy cliques on screen are doing two jobs at once. They’re offering what the world often denies, strength and community. They’re also showing how those same communities can be corrupted, weaponized, or turned into competitions for control.

The clearest example is Forbidden Fruits, which A.V. Club says channels “Mean-Girls-meets-The-Craft” energy. The film, written by Meredith Alloway, is set among retail workers in a large mall and follows a tightly shut group of fashionable it-girls named after fruit: Apple (Lili Reinhart), Cherry (Victoria Pedretti), and Fig (Alexandra Shipp). A would-be coven candidate named Pumpkin (Lola Tung) emerges from the food court’s pretzel store looking to fit in. But as she joins the Fruits, the group’s dynamic sours, and what starts as a fantasy of belonging starts acting like a fortress.

The movie’s coven operates like a membership system that protects its insiders while narrowing their world. The group bonds by tightening its limited access to one another at the expense of other friendships and dates outside the miniature universe they’ve built in a store dressing room. A.V. Club highlights the ritual mechanics: Apple demands the members deal with their “big feelings” in a dressing room, a forced mystical confessional where the group maintains the illusion of being the mall’s aloof cool girls. Even the fun of “matriculating” Pumpkin with spells and practices is framed as a setup. As the rules become more constricting, Pumpkin’s own agenda surfaces, and the sisterhood built to isolate and exploit becomes, in A.V. Club’s words, no sisterhood at all.

That internal contradiction shows up again in Camp, another witch-forward story, but with a different emotional contract. A.V. Club describes it as dreamlike horror about surviving tragedy, with Emily (Zola Grimmer) convinced her losses are her fault. Her dad sends her to a religious camp for troubled kids, not just for plot logistics but to distract her from the death of her closest friend. The key shift is social: for the first time, Emily feels accepted by fellow misfit counselors who do not walk away from her sad stories.

At camp, the witchy community becomes a healing infrastructure, not a control scheme. A.V. Club notes that the counselors sneak into a cabin’s attic to create their own space, complete with lamps, candles, books, and old picture frames, surrounded by the warmth of wooden walls and the arrival of newfound friends. The tone is “like a summer camp update of Charmed,” but the stakes are grief instead of monsters-of-the-week. Where Forbidden Fruits uses its coven as a bunker, Camp uses its coven as a bridge: the unseen presence in the woods, the mysterious voice, and even the appearance of a phone booth in the middle of nowhere create enchantment and also pressure Emily to confront pent-up grief. A.V. Club emphasizes the choice this generates, Emily deciding to hang out with her new friends over returning home to her dad at the end of the summer.

The third film, The Serpent’s Skin, leans even harder into the supernatural and the politics around who gets safety. A.V. Club describes Alice Maio Mackay’s movie as following Anna (Alexandra McVicker), a psychically gifted woman leaving a homophobic hometown to start over. She meets Gen (Camp’s Fast), a goth tattoo artist with similar but different supernatural abilities and a vision of a mysterious snake pattern. Together, they become a powerful couple against an intolerant world and a demon possessing Anna’s “hottie-next-door,” Danny (Jordan Dulieu). A.V. Club says this is the most explicitly political film of the three, tackling the recent rise of transphobia and intolerance head-on.

In A.V. Club’s telling, the demon is not the only antagonist. The evil that displaces Anna follows her into the new city via hateful posters and men. Gen notes that Anna acts like the “witch hunters are still on to us,” and Anna replies, “They are, they just changed their names.” Before the demonic presence emerges, the film’s first villain is an ordinary man who attacks women, Anna included. That sequencing matters. It keeps the witch concept tethered to the real-world pattern A.V. Club lays out: backlash, harassment, and the way intolerance rebrands itself.

Zooming out, A.V. Club argues witches have long functioned as stand-ins for women on the fringes of society. But the outlet doesn’t treat this as symbolism-only. It treats group magic as a storyline about autonomy: gathering together can be radical and courageous when you are not supposed to talk about oppression. The covens in Camp, The Serpent’s Skin, and Forbidden Fruits are rooted in searching for community and solidarity when women do not feel at home. The darker note is that connection can be exploited from within. The strategic, second-order implication is that studios and platforms are not just buying “female empowerment” vibes. They are purchasing narrative engines that can swing between healing and power struggle.

For executives, creators, and investors watching audience appetite, the lesson is less about witches as a genre and more about the mechanics of belonging. Sisterhood plays out differently depending on whether the group rules are designed to listen and embrace, or designed to isolate and control. That distinction will likely matter in greenlights, marketing angles, and audience retention, especially in a climate where media scrutiny can be intense and cultural relevance is hard currency. A.V. Club closes by extending the idea beyond these three films, mentioning an upcoming Practical Magic sequel centered on the power of sisterhood. In other words, the coven is not a one-off trend. It is becoming a format for negotiating real fears, real backlash, and the hunger for safe connection in public.