MOVIES: BEAUTIFUL CREATURES

Director: Richard LaGravenese

Genre: Fantasy, Romance

Tagline: Dark secrets will come to light

Running Time: 2h 4mins

Awarded Stars: 4/5

Based on the well received book series ‘The Caster Chronicles’, Beautiful Creatures, is the movie adaptation by the first of four books in the series by the same name. Being referred to by some as the next Twilight Saga, Beautiful Creatures tells a beautiful love tale, of a boy and a girl and the supernatural phenomenon that stands in the way of their happiness, you can now see the Twilight resemblance. Some have however compared the movie’s not so impressive opening weekend box office performance to the Twilight series and decided to right if off already. The movie however has a couple famous faces, Jeremy Irons, from The Borgias, Viola Davis, Emma Thompson, Emmy Rossum, from Shameless and Margo Martindale.

The movie begins with Ethan Wate, the boy, narrating his enjoyment in reading banned books, just sort of like the introduction with Edward Cullen in Twilight or Stefan Salvator in The Vampire Diaries. His first day in junior high is graced with the presence of the girl he’s been probably dreaming about, Lena Duchannes, who isn’t popular with the other kids, who spread gossip about devil worship being practiced in her family. Lena overhears leading the classroom windows to shatter due to her amplifying tension.

Ethan and Lena later bond over their mutual love for poetry and the loss they’ve both encountered. Lena confesses that her people are casters, capable of magic. Lena’s true nature is however expected to be seen when she turns 16, either having her magic steer her to the light or the dark, each side being fought for by Lena’s uncle Macon Ravenwood and mother Sarafine, respectively.

Personally, I felt this movie had a good beginning to the possible franchise, keeping in mind the teen romance storyline behind it. I also felt that veteran actors like Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson handled their characters more powerfully and brought out the content intended superbly. The movie could have used a dash of Tim Burton spooks though, to at least help it feel more mystic and maybe appealing to all those people, like the macho male, who hate these types of movies. The casting for the two lead roles was however spot on in my opinion, a step up from the two from Twilight, since they had evident chemistry that worked so well with the storyline, and the scenes where it was just the two of them talking and connecting as real people had genuine magic in them.