Psycho's Movie Reviews #201: Beautiful Creatures (2013)

Beautiful Creatures is a 2013 American romantic gothic fantasy film written for the screen and directed by Richard LaGravenese based on the 2009 novel of the same name by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. The film stars Alden Ehrenreich, Alice Englert, Jeremy Irons, Viola Davis, Emmy Rossum, Thomas Mann, and Emma Thompson.

The film was released in the United States on February 14, 2013, by Warner Bros. Pictures. It received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $60.1 million worldwide against its $60 million budget, making it a box office bomb.

Plot

In Gatlin, South Carolina, teenager Ethan Wate awakens from a recurring dream of a girl he has not met. He despairs of his small-town existence and dreams of leaving for college. His first day of junior year, a newcomer Lena Duchannes resembles the girl Ethan has been dreaming about. Other students gossip about Lena's reclusive uncle, Macon Ravenwood, suggesting her family are devil worshippers. On the way home, Ethan nearly runs her over. Giving her a ride, they bond over interests.

In class, a few students insist they can not be in class with Lena, and pray to be protected from her and her family. Visibly shaken, her class windows shatter, increasing fears and suspicions she is a witch. Ethan and Lena become friends and he gives her a locket he found at Greenbriar. Both touching the locket triggers a shared flashback to the Civil War.

Macon, disapproving of their relationship, conspires with Ethan's family friend, Amma, to separate them. Lena tells Ethan that she and her family are "casters" capable of performing spells. On her sixteenth birthday, her true nature will reveal itself toward either the light or dark.

Complications arise when two powerful dark casters aim to push Lena to the dark: Ridley, Lena's cousin, and Lena's mother, Sarafine, who did not raise Lena and has possessed Mrs. Lincoln, the mother of Ethan's friend Link.

Sarafine foresees Lena will become a powerful caster, wanting Lena to use her power to purge the Earth of humans, leaving just casters. The couple have another flashback of their past with the locket, revealing that their ancestors, caster Genevieve Duchannes and mortal Confederate soldier Ethan Carter Wate, were in love. Ethan died in battle, and Genevieve revived him. Doing so laid a curse on all Duchannes women; they will go dark on their sixteenth birthday. A mortified Lena asks Amma to help, being a seer and keeper of the caster library beneath the town library, extending all across the USA. The most ancient of the books reveals the secret to undoing the curse: someone Lena loves has to die. Unwilling to take Ethan's life, Lena erases his memories of their love.

Seducing Link, Ridley gives him a bullet to use in the upcoming Civil War re-enactment of the Battle of Honey Hill, also Lena's sixteenth birthday, Lena feels the shock of the curse being broken and runs to Ethan, clutching his dying body as Ridley and Sarafine encourage her to accept the dark. She lashes out in anger, sending a huge tornado through the crowd, until Ethan's body transforms into Macon, who had disguised himself to be the sacrifice to lift the curse. As he is dying, he reveals that he promised Ethan's mother to keep her son alive. These dying words encourage Lena to "claim herself"; she causes the moon to disappear so it cannot claim her for the dark. Allowing Ridley to flee, she pulls Sarafine from Mrs. Lincoln's body, powerfully sealing away Sarafine's spirit.

Six months later, a still-amnesiac Ethan visits Amma in the library before a college tour with Link. Lena gives him a book they had once shared as a present. Lena is a half light/dark caster, like her mother and cousin. As Link and Ethan reach the town line, the town's burned exit sign reminds him momentarily, he gets out of the car, shouting Lena. She hears his call and is freed of her dark side.

Production

Alcon Entertainment purchased the rights to Beautiful Creatures in 2009, with director Richard LaGravenese signing on soon after to write and direct the movie. Casting for the film began in late 2011, and in February 2012, Viola Davis was cast as Amma. Soon after, Jack O'Connell and Alice Englert were announced to be playing the lead characters of Ethan Wate and Lena Duchannes. O'Connell later dropped out of the film due to a scheduling conflict, with Alden Ehrenreich assuming the role of Ethan. Further casting included Emma Thompson as Sarafine and Mrs. Lincoln and Jeremy Irons as Lena's uncle Macon Ravenwood. Of the character of Lena, Englert stated that "Lena is like most girls when you feel massively insecure".

Principal photography was originally scheduled to begin 23 April 2012, in New Orleans, and took place, said LaGravenese, beginning "I think, April 16th, and then we shot until June 26th, and then post[-production] was for me from July 5th to December 17th." LaGravenese chose to incorporate practical special effects along with computer-based ones for certain scenes, as Emmy Rossum described: "When we walked on to the stage and realized the chandelier does actually move, the chairs did actually spin, the table did actually spin... it was all very exciting." On 19 September 2012, the first trailer for Beautiful Creatures was released.

Camille Balsamo played Genevieve Katherine Duchannes in a sequence cut from the film; LaGravenese said: There was one part that I shot on green screen where I had all these actresses playing all the different Duchannes women from different periods from the Civil War on. And my costume designer, Jeffrey Kurland, had gowns and things, one was from the turn of the century, one was from the ’20s, one was from the ’40s, one was from the '60s, and they were going to appear in the first flashback and at the end of the movie, and then I cut them. ... It was just an idea that didn't work.

The original soundtrack album was composed by thenewno2 and released by WaterTower Music. The style of the soundtrack was referred to as "swamptronic", a term coined by LaGravenese, and it was recorded at Abbey Road. Dhanni Harrison, son of George Harrison, used some of his father's guitars and equipment in the recording of the soundtrack.

Release/Reception/Box Office

Beautiful Creatures' release date was originally scheduled to be on 13 February 2013, but distributor Warner Bros. later pushed the date to Thursday, 24 February 2013. The film was still released in Sweden on the 13th, a day before the film's North American release date. The film held its official US premiere on 11 February 2013, in New York City.

Beautiful Creatures was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on 21 May 2013. In its first month in release, the film sold around 428,792 copies in both DVD and Blu-ray formats combined, bringing in a consumer revenue of $7,377,859. As of 16 June 2013, the film has grossed an estimated $10,337,826 in DVD and Blu-ray sales.

The film has received mixed reviews from critics. It has a 47% rating on review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 169 reviews, with the site's consensus stating: "Charming romantic leads and esteemed supporting cast aside, Beautiful Creatures is a plodding YA novel adaptation that feels watered down for the Twilight set". On Metacritic, the film received a score of 52% based on 40 reviews, indicating mixed or average reviews.

Owen Gleiberman, in Entertainment Weekly, gave the film a "B-", writing, "Beautiful Creatures is arriving in a market-place full of Twilight junkies still eager for their supernatural teen-romantic fix, and the film's concept couldn't be clearer: It's Twilight with the sexes reversed. This time it's the boy who's the mortal: moody, bookish Ethan, the outsider in his sleepy small town." Gleiberman added that though the film "is lushly pictorial and not-too-badly acted... the audience, like Ethan, spends way too much time waiting around for Lena to learn whether she's a good girl or a bad girl."

The film review website ScreenRant called the film "a choppy and melodramatic experience with very little payoff beyond the central love story. Worse yet, overlooking the usual on-the-nose dialogue about eternal love and sacrifice, this tale of star-crossed sweethearts is especially cheesy and unconvincing – even when compared to similarly heavy-handed young adult novel-turned-movies. Fans of the supernatural romance subgenre will get about what they expect...".

David Denby of The New Yorker wrote that the movie "is a classic example of the confusions and the outright blunders that can overtake talented people who commit themselves to a concept driven purely by the movie marketplace... Alas, the satirical energy and Ethan's bright talk dissipate after a while." He praises a scene from the Civil War flashback which "appears as Ethan and Lena are watching a movie in a local theatre, but only they can see it" as "an interesting idea that I wish LaGravenese had pursued as a parallel narrative. This kind of movie, however, demands not interesting ideas but whooshing spectacle and madly redundant climaxes and a soundtrack filled with thuds and a shouting female chorus."

Scott Mendelson of Forbes magazine called the film "shockingly good" and encouraged viewers who missed it to check it out on video.

CinemaScore audience polls gave the film a B grade.

Beautiful Creatures was featured on episode 187 of the comedy podcast How Did This Get Made?

The film grossed $10,124,912 during its opening weekend (including its Thursday release date), under-performing based on media expectations.

While the film was considered to be a flop domestically, only grossing $19,452,138 by the end of its North American domestic theatrical run (against a $60 million production budget) it did better internationally, where it has grossed $40,600,000. As of 21 April 2013, the film has grossed a worldwide total of $60,052,138, making it a financial loss as it failed to recoup its production budget and other costs, as generally speaking, half of ticket sales go to theatres. Variety magazine listed Beautiful Creatures as one of "Hollywood's biggest box office bombs of 2013".

Budget $50–60 million

Box office $60.1 million

My Review

Despite the mixed/average reviews, decided to see 'Beautiful Creatures' anyway as someone who did enjoy the book series, liked the idea of the story, enjoys films that fit under the same genres that this does and who really likes to loves a lot of the cast members in other things. Other than the reviews, what did make me a little nervous too was the constant references by many to the 'Twilight' franchise, am very much indifferent to that franchise to put it lightly and the best film from it ('Eclipse') is only slightly watchable.

Will get the comparisons out of the way. 'Beautiful Creatures' is in my mind much better than any of the 'Twilight' films combined, better made, much better acting (the 'Twilight' films only had like two good actors, whereas even with the accents the acting mostly wasn't an issue for me here) and the story, for all its problems, interested me more. 'Beautiful Creatures' is by no means perfect and would hesitate in calling it great, only generally found it slightly above average, but judging it as a film on its own merits (rather than frequently comparing it to the books, of which the film is a pretty poor adaptation of) it's a better film than given credit for.

Starting with the bad things, 'Beautiful Creatures' would have leant itself better to a film series rather than just one film, because there is a feel (and it was what was pretty much happening) of elements of two or more books in one film, which made it feel rushed and cluttered. The caster mythology could have been delved into much more, because that did tend to be convoluted (anybody who has no knowledge of the books may find themselves lost). Particularly towards the end, before the film ends in a vague and rushed way complete with a clumsy twist, it is not a surprise that book fans found the ending too much of a slap in the face.

Also found some of the earlier portions of 'Beautiful Creatures' to be too exposition heavy, with some clunky dialogue and the pace in need of a tightening up. The Lena's first day at school portion was very badly acted by the secondary cast, was really cringing, and written in a very bad teen school comedy film way. It has been said numerous times about the Southern accents being bad, do agree with it veering on either extreme of come and go (Jeremy Irons, accents never really has been his forte and this is coming from a fan of his) and exaggerated (Alden Ehrenreich) of the main cast. And it's even worse for the secondary cast playing characters that are very broadly stereotypical, that is true of a lot of Southerner portrayals on film, and never feel like real people.

Conversely, 'Beautiful Creatures' is a surprisingly good looking film, it was clear a lot of time, effort and money went into it. Especially loved the locations, with a big standout going to the Ravenwood mansion and the photography is both beautiful and gothic. The costumes are also ni nicely done, the kookiness of those of the Ravenwoods (including Eileen Atkins with a pink wig!) added to their mysteriousness, and the dinner table scene sees some editing and lighting that are wonderfully psychedelic without giving me too much headache or dizziness. The music fits quite nicely too and was hardly unattractive to me on its own, am big on both those things when it comes to music in film so both are good positions to be in.

The script is flawed early on but as the film progressed the snappier, more intriguing and tighter it became. Macon, with the film livening up by quite a bit when he appears, has some of the best lines and that's in his first scene alone. The story isn't perfect, but enough of it does compel with two scenes in particular standing out. One was the dinner table scene, along with Ridley's flashback that was the most striking scene visually, and the other was the Macon and Sarafine confrontation, the chemistry between Irons and Emma Thompson sizzles and seeing a clash of the titans-like moments between two great actors is always great to watch. The likeably natural, no awkwardness here (actually did get the sense that they were in love), chemistry between Ehrenreich and Alice Englert also helps as does the confident direction.

Found Ehrenreich and Englert to mostly not be bad at all in their roles, Ehrenreich's accent is not the best and he overdoes it at times but the quirkiness and likeability is there. While Englert is more subtle without being sullen or expressionless, did root for Lena myself having been treated like an outcast in school for prejudicial reasons too. They are very well supported, outshone even, by the veteran cast, with Atkins and Martina Martindale doing a lot with small roles and Viola Davis bringing sincerity to hers. The authors had Irons in mind when writing Macon and one can tell because not so good accent aside he was made for the character, and he looked like he was having fun while bringing gravitas and menace. Thompson even more so, camping it up deliciously and nearly stealing the film, and the same goes for a truly delightful Emmy Rossum.

Summarising, not quite beautiful but far from ugly. 6/10