Film Review - Beautiful Creatures (2013)

Beautiful Creatures
Director(s): Richard LaGravenese
Genres: Fantasy, Romance | Childrens, Young Adult
Duration: 124 Minutes
Release Date: 14th Febuary 2013
IMDB Rating: 
Butterfly Rating: 
Trailer: See Here
Buy From: Amazon | Ebay

Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she's struggling to conceal her power, and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.

Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town's oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.

In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.

This film is an adaptation of a novel.
Please bare in mind that during this review, there may be spoilers referring to scenes in the novel.

If you rate and review Beautiful Creatures on the cinematic experience it's not a bad film, delivering on all the cliche but vital things the industry thinks young adults want: a romance so instalove and cliche you just can't help but giggle, a plot extremely unclear that throws unanswered questions at you faster than the windstorms and lightning that one of the main characters can produce and an actress so well known for her parts in Love Actually, Nanny McPhee and Harry Potter that people are sure to like it. From a book-to-movie adaptation though, Beautiful Creatures fails on almost everything other than the vivid world.

From the start I knew I would feel a little iffy about the film merely because I had to open my book review of Beautiful Creatures just to understand the beginning. What was Ethan doing? Dreaming? Imagining? Going insane? These thoughts ran through my head during the opening sequence, also, I have to mention, all the accents in this film threw me because I'd entirely forgotten it was set in South Carolina so that constantly made me feel uncomfortable throughout the entire film. I'm usually pretty good with accents from around the world, but I'm definitely not used to the one the characters had in Beautiful Creatures, and this made understanding some of the simplest of speech and sentences during the film a huge problem. However, when the lighting wasn't too dark and the opening sequence a little more menacing than in the novel, the music used was actually really complimentary to the feel of the film which felt and looked much darker than the book had. As openings goes from a film point of view, it started off strong, entertaining and had the makings for a good film. Sadly, after the opening scenes, it all went a little down hill from there..

When it came to important plot points that I remember from the book, this film has none of them; no dog, no necklace, not enough focus on the history and the curse, and not enough focus on the locket, or the claiming and with all those little and pretty important features out of the picture, it left me pretty darn disappointed. When that wasn't enough, other tiny details like Lena's hair being slightly off and not the right colour or Ridley's appearance being off and nothing like in the novel to the fact that the final scenes were absolutely nothing like those in the novel were, no matter how powerful or well made they were. By the end of the film, I was frustrated with the entire set up, the change in plot direction and set up and the taking out and putting in of scenes in the film that it seriously didn't need. To say I was angry is an understatement and a huge one at that.

When it came down the characters and the romance, the film was both good and bad. The relationship had the same set up as the novel did, very brute, very quick and slightly unbelievable but it was the actual actors they had playing the characters I couldn't relate to. Alden Ehrenreich I felt wasn't a good choice for Ethan's character, Ethan in the novel felt much less toned and less sharp in the humour and face, and while I appreciated the sarcasm and humour that film Ethan had, it wasn't the Ethan I remembered from Beautiful Creatures. Add this to Alice Englert as Lena and I felt the whole dynamics of their characters and the relationship they portrayed was so forced, so unnatural and took over the entire film and premise. I found myself smiling once or twice, but there was too much kissing, too much 'love' thrown about and too much of, well, them. It's such a shame because Emma Thompson, one of my favourite actresses had an amazing part of playing Sarafine and she was overshadowed completely. She had this fantastic raw talent of taking Mrs Lincoln and going from 'Mother who needs a damn slap' to 'holy shoot she's a damn nasty little so and so isn't she' and it was so good when she was on screen, so much so, her screen time was some of my favourite time. Now, don't get me wrong, although the scene between her and Macon wasn't involved in the novel whatsoever, I actually quite enjoyed it, I enjoyed the perspective it gave on Sarafine and how Thompson took the character and created such a depth and pure hatred towards her that is so rare in young adult films these days. I really think her acting talent was a waste on this film entirely. I don't want to go too in depth with the other characters and actors, but Emmy Rossum made such a good Ridley, while Thomas Mann was not a good Link choice I think and their relationship with one another was so, not novel like it wasn't nice whatsoever and I couldn't take to it at all.

I didn't like the direction Richard LaGravenese took with the plot either. I felt important scenes such as the swapping of Ethan and Macon was one of the biggest to set up for the second book and her totally dismissed and re-arranged it all, not to mention the fact that Ethan's Father was entirely not involved whatsoever also highly annoyed me; don't involved a character I don't get to learn anything about or even so at all. Missing scenes from the meal at Ethans, the randomly placed table spinning scene at Lena's, the random shoot out between Link and Ethan, the scenes to do with the past and the curse that were so badly put together and had no real seperation from Lena and Ethan, damn I could go on about how much changed and how much was done terribly, but I shan't. Oh, I will mention how utterly cliche the 6 months later part was; no grieving of Lena over Macon whatsoever which is so vital to Beautiful Darkness and the whole 'changing Ethan's memory' was just, no, I wasn't impressed whatsoever.

As a whole and from a film point of view, it had the standard makings of a good film with beautiful scenes; the dining room in Lena's house, the final scenes between Lena and Sarafine and even the detail on Lena's interior house design was just beautiful, the so utterly predictable, cliche relationship and making sure the viewers knew something Ethan didn't, but for me, as someone who as read the novel, it lacked a lot of the features that even with time I've still stood by and enjoyed. I would watch it again with other people in the future, but I don't think I could consciously enjoy much at all, and for this reason, I think it's safer for the director and producers to not produce a sequel and leave this film as a lonesome flop.