Beautiful Creatures centres on the love story between a mortal man, Alden Ehrenreich, and a caster (read: witch), Alice Englert, who is apparently doomed to turn evil on her 16th birthday. Most of her family, including Jeremy Irons’ Macon, try to pull her towards the light, while her cousin and the super-caster Sarafine (Emma Thompson) attempt to sway her to the dark side.
The film has potential to be a battle between the light and the dark, but instead it basically becomes a slightly less annoying Twilight – at least in this no one sparkles. The love story between our protagonists is a fairly typical teen romance. The mortal Ethan is your typical troubled soul, too smart for the South, yet still a little dim. The witch, Lena, is slightly gothic and mysterious, pushing people away because she either hates everyone or fears hurting them.
Neither particularly bring much acting ability to the table and those godawful Southern accents grate like hell at first, which doesn’t help to endear them to the audience. Lena’s family live in seclusion, having many dark rumours around them – like a certain Cullen family. The only thing making it slightly stand out is the male perspective, but this is only utilised for the first half of the film before it seems to be forgotten entirely, with the focus switching to Lena and her struggle; where it feels like it should have been for more of the runtime.
The supporting cast do go someways to making the film a bit more memorable. Emma Thompson brings across a chilling character in her few scenes as the villain of the piece. More scenes with her would have been very welcome. Jeremy Irons hams it up in the role of Macon, being far too over the top in his eccentric manner, and it’s very hard to care about what happens to him as he seems so cold. Emmy Rossum is given a lot of scenes for a rather boring character, her main attribute being her intense sluttiness. Viola Davis feels miscast, but only because she is given such a small bland role that doesn’t allow her to show her ability at all.
Around the halfway mark the film truly starts to lag, featuring endless scenes of Lena reading in a library leading up to her 16th birthday. The film’s climax is unfortunately quite predictable, as is the final scene, which reverses all the hard sacrifices her character has made.
The extras present four deleted scenes, most of which simply show more of Emmy Rossum’s character being herself. There are also many behind-the-scene features, going in to how the film was adapted for the screen, creating the world, the characters, special effects and costume designs; giving fans a full exploration of the world. There also some trailers, which are only remarkable for showcasing a great Florence and the Machine song.
Overall Verdict: A bland, overlong love story that doesn’t bring anything new to the Twilight inspired world and wastes several fine actors.
Special Features:
Deleted scenes
Behind the scenes featurettes
Trailers
Reviewer: Matt Mallinson