Review of Beautiful Creatures (2013) by Spangle — 25 Oct 2016

Alden Ehrenreich. Jeremy Irons. Viola Davis. Emma Thompson. Thomas Mann. Emmy Rossum. Zoey Deutch. Alice Englert. A talented cast of actors appear in this mixed bag of great, good, bad, and awful that is Beautiful Creatures. Greenlit in the aftermath of the Twilight earthquake and directed by Richard LaGravanese, Beautiful Creatures has some elements that really win you over and make the viewer forget any possible connection to Twilight. Other moments remind you that this is a young adult film crafted to appeal to teenage girls who loved Twilight, while only intermittently providing enjoyment for the sacrificial lamb of a boyfriend. Yet, for film fans, Beautiful Creatures is not wholly unredeemable and, actually, by the end I had quite a good time with this one.

First, the negatives. Beautiful Creatures often resembles Gilligan's Island, in terms of its script with this cast of actors. Much like the actors in Gilligan's Island, the cast of Beautiful Creatures is left stranded on an island with nothing but some magic powers to try and claw their way back to shore. Somehow, they occasionally do, but this does not stop the writers from having Emma Thompson gleefully exclaim, "Well slap my ass and call me Sally!" This line is actually said in the film by Emma Thompson's character, Sarafine Duchannes. That said, much of the bad writing comes courtesy of the film's attempts to appeal to its target demographic. Telling the story of a high school boy, Ethan Wate (Ehrenreich) who falls in love with Lena (Alice Englert), Beautiful Creatures is essentially the reversal of Twilight. Here, Lena is a "caster", which is essentially a witch, but not called a witch. As a 15-year old, she is nearing the time when she will be claimed on her 16th birthday. Her mother, Sarafine, is a dark caster. She uses her powers for evil. Ridley (Rossum), her cousin, was also claimed for the dark side and is now a siren (some inspirational casting right there). Women are doomed to be claimed based on their own internal inclinations. Men, however, can switch. This is the case for Lena's uncle, Macon (Irons). Though a dark caster, he turns to the light side for Lena's sake to try and keep her light. This is all important because whether she goes dark or light will determine the fate of the universe. The more I write this, the more it feels like Star Wars dropped into the modern day with some Civil War flashbacks (women in the Duchannes bloodline are cursed to be dark because of some Duchannes woman in the Civil War who brought her mortal significant other back to life). As you can tell, this one gets a bit outlandish at times. Yet, it remains always watchable even when the film refuses to own its silliness.

As one review I read stated, the film needs a bit of "Tim Burton's charm". This is certainly fair and while, given his present output, he probably would have dropped the ball, Beautiful Creatures as directed by Tim Burton would be a way better film. This outlandish plot leads to a lot of playing it straight. Yet, unintentional humor is afoot in this film and is indiscernible from actual jokes. The actual jokes do work quite often here, but the amount of unintentional humor really does hold this one back from transcending expectations even further. This is where Burton would have come in, as the film would have felt light and silly in spite of the serious consequences of the plot.

Romantically, the chemistry between Ehrenreich and Englert is actually very good. They can charm you socks off with the idealistic look at love and romance, which really captures the element that can make teenage romance films so watchable at times. It does not hurt they are solid actors, though the dialogue does do some damage to their acting skills in this one. Thematically, the film is incredibly tight. With romance films, the film's approach to love is what always captivates me the most. Here, Beautiful Creatures effectively shows the duality of love. Rather than spelling it out for you, the film uses visuals and character actions to showcase how love can single-handedly lead you out of the darkness, but love and the pain it can cause can throw you into the fire. The climactic sequence, even if it has some clunky dialogue, really does nail this theme very well and, more than anything else, this portion made me the most satisfied. In terms of religion, the film takes an interesting approach. The first hour seems very anti-Christian, but the second half clears this up entirely through Viola Davis' character, Amma. A keeper, or protector, of casters, Amma is a Christian. Through her the film showcases that, while casters may be written off as abominations of Satan by the overly Christian community, it only makes sense that if God created everything, he created them as well. This feels shockingly close to my argument for evolution and rectifying it with religion. For this, Beautiful Creatures is even better in my eyes.