I was lucky enough to catch an advanced screening of “Beautiful Creatures” which is a loosely based movie adaptation on the novel of the same name.
The story is about a young girl called Lena Duchannes who is a witch {known in the series as a “Caster“} that will be claimed by her inner powers to be either a “Light” or “Dark” caster by her 16th birthday. She’s even got a countdown on her hand to remind her of this!
Although the story is mainly about Lena‘s fate, we are introduced to the story through the eyes of Ethan Wate who is mortal and is fascinated by Lena even before he meets her.
The film mostly follows Ethan to mirror the books which are written in his point of view. I for one have tried to read the books and found them very difficult to read due to bad writing; it was slow and had too much product placement in the first few chapters. I didn’t even get up to the part where the girl is introduced yet. Now I’m not saying the book was bad, since I am sure a lot of people love it, but I’m a fastreader and I just couldn’t bring myself to continue. So you can see how when I went to see the film, I expected to hate it – but I didn’t.
The film has good casting with the likes of Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson, but I don’t think that their appearances are enough to help this film gain phenomenon status which it was obviously aiming for.
I felt that Emmy Rossum was a stand out with her performance as “Ridley Duchannes“. It was obvious that Emmy had a lot of fun playing this role. Her costumes were breathtaking! I actually would love to hunt down Ridley and raid her wardrobe. In fact, most of the costumes were quite amazing. I also believe Alden Ehrenreich as Ethan was a very promising performance and I will keep my eyes peeled for future works from this young talented actor.
I understand that a lot people who enjoyed the book hate this movie due to the many changes made in the film, but I think that is why I enjoyed it. I think that if you want to check out a nice film that has a good constant plot, a love story that doesn’t overkill the rest of the story, and some neat special effects – then there’s no harm in checking out this film. It’s definitely worth a look, especially if you haven’t read the book. If you have read the book, I would avoid this movie. I know what it’s like to be unhappy after reading a book first with a movie adaptation that isn’t loyal to the book – it hurts. So please, if you have read the book and still intend on seeing this movie, heed my warnings.
I firmly believe a film can’t become a phenomenon if it pisses it’s fandom off. It’s such a shame because from what I saw, I felt that the film had a lot of potential and left room for a possible sequel. Sadly, I don’t see this happening. Despite all this, I enjoyed this film as a stand alone presentation. I never finished the book, and although I went in not expecting much – I was satisfied with what I saw.
If you want to see a nice teen fantasy romance, go see this film. Just don’t expect sequels.