Beautiful Creatures (2013)

I know what you are thinking and that is I am have seen so many Zoey Deutch (Good Kids) films this year and while you may be right I have made it my mission to see as many as I can. For today's film, we cruised over to IMDB.com and we checked out the 2013 film Beautiful Creatures which was adapted for the screen and directed by Richard LaGravenese (The Last Five Years) and is based off of the novel of the same name by Kami Garcia. The film stars Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story) as Ethan Wate, your everyday small South Carolina town kid who dreams of one day leaving the town of Gaitlin to see the world outside. Plans change for Ethan when the mysterious Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert) shows up and stirs things up to the point that Ethan discovers that his town actually holds some very dark secrets that make it anything, but boring. The film also stars Deutch as Emily, Jeremy Irons (Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice) as Macon Ravenwood, Viola Davis (How To Get Away With Murder) as Amma, Emmy Rossum (The Day After Tomorrow) as Ridley Duchannes, Thomas Mann (The Stanford Prison Experiment) as Link, Emma Thompson (Burnt) as Mavis Lincoln/Sarafine, Kyle Gallner (The Haunting In Connecticut) as Larkin, Tiffany Boone (The Following) as Savannah Snow, and Pruitt Taylor Vince (Constantine) as Mr. Lee.

This was a time in Hollywood when every studio was looking for the next teen book franchise to turn into a film dynasty like they had with Twilight, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, etc. Unfortunately, no one was interested in some witches (or casters) with southern drawls because no other film was ever made and I could be wrong about that. I do not know exactly how many books were written in the series, but this seems like a thank the heavens moment for no other film. I am not saying that it was a terrible film because it had some cool moments in it, but it wasn't exactly that great either. The whole entire film felt like a witch version of Romeo and Juliet where Juliet finds out that she is a witch who doesn't know how she is going to turn when she hits 16. Is she going to be a good witch or a bad evil witch? Then she has to deal with the fact that Romeo is no one special because he is a mortal and he has the potential to screw things up so that the dark side ends up choosing her. The whole film is a back and forth argument of you shouldn't be with him versus the star crossed lovers realizing that they should be together. The only real difference is how the events play out and what the end result is which I loved the final confrontation sequence at the end of the film even though the build up was annoying. I am going to give the film an B-/C+ for a final grade because it's somewhere in there.