Not So Beautiful Creatures

 Ok, let’s get this out of the way. Yes, I know Beautiful Creatures came out months ago and nobody gave a shit about it then. The reason this is so badly delayed is because this review was originally intended as a video review but that got stalled due to demands on time and eventually my laptop getting bricked. Now everyone who was in a position to review the film has reviewed it and so doing a video seems pointless. Thankfully most critics have been reviewing Beautiful Creatures in a favourable light in contrast to my own views. So if say, you were made curious on the premise alone and wanted to check it out consider me present to direct you elsewhere. Seriously if you want some witch-related stuff to chew on there’s Tiffany Aching, Roald Dahl’s The Witches, hell even The Craft is a better bet.

In fact on the subject of Witches it’s notable that over the last year the TV industry has been working to make Witches the new supernatural thing with The Secret Circle and over here Switch and while none of them have amounted to more than okay, the move overall makes sense. Witches are just about the best way of capitalising on the success of Hollywood’s various young adult franchises while breaking away from said franchises undertones of romanticised subjugation. It empowers the women as both the narrative driving force and the supernatural creatures in question. And on the surface Beautiful Creatures seems to want to accomplish this.

The plot is something of a gender-inverted Twilight. It revolves around Ethan Wate a high-schooler in the rural county of Gaitlin who falls for new girl Lena Duchannes. Lena however is a Caster, a race gifted with various supernatural powers, so-called because this is mainstream and the word witch is just goofy. The problem with Casters is that on their sixteenth birthday their powers are claimed by the quirky outfitted forces of light or the Wilson’s disease afflicted forces of darkness. And things don’t exactly look light for Lena though with Gaitlin’s community turning against her as part of a plot orchestrated by Dark Caster Seraphine as well as a family curse involving Ethan’s own ancestry.

The reason I see this as attempting a more progressive portrayal of women is because of the more decisive role Lena plays. Throughout the story it’s reinforced to her that she has no choice in the matter, she’ll be claimed by either side whether she wants to or not and more likely dark owing to circumstances. Yet through it all Lena remains determined that there is some loophole, some workaround that will allow her to decide her own fate. And when said loophole presents itself it comes at a severe cost to her relationship with Ethan which she reluctantly accepts.  

   

Honestly I’d be all for this if it wasn’t for one minor detail that the film establishes about Caster Mythology which is that male Casters can choose to go light or dark while women can’t. This is a deviation from the book-incidentally yes I read the fucking book get over it-that I’m tempted to say was changed because it hints at plot points explored in the later novels and this film is really hesitant to hint at making sequels. But I really think it undermines the idea of Beautiful Creatures being the feminist counter-point to Twilight, that plus y’know it just not being very good.

Now I don’t want this to become adaptation 101 but one of the things I liked about the book was that the relationship between Ethan and Lena actually bothered to pace itself. Ethan is infatuated with her from the start ,as is par for the course, but his attraction is grounded in his characterisation.  Not only is Lena set apart from the citizens of Gaitlin but also she reminds him of how much he fits in with the community he longs to escape from.

Crucially it’s only a third of the way into the book before they become mutually romantic with time spent up to that point getting to know each other, gradually revealing Lena’s powers and exploring Caster mythos. This provides a way of drip-feeding exposition while at the same time providing context for Lena and Ethan spending time together which makes their eventual hookup more credible.

By contrast the film completely rushes things, going from antagonistic bitching to making out in a matter of minutes.  As a result there just seems something artificial about the whole thing, it proceeds far too quickly to feel genuine. In fact the pacing as a whole is a mess, scenes from the book are copied word for word and feel as limp and lifeless as reciting lines is. But then entirely new scenes are contrived simply to infodump exposition, like they know the central love story has no meat to it and are spacing out the Caster mythology just to fill out screen time.

Using an existing work is a tricky business where sometimes it’s best to stay faithful and other times it’s best to use the source as a jumping off point for an original story. But Beautiful Creatures combines the worst of both worlds, throwing aside interesting plot points with one hand and forcing us through verbatim sequences with the other.

Another problem is the narrative voice of Ethan, not the most original frustrated young American but at least when he was narrating the book I could imagine his southern drawl was tolerable to listen to. Alden Ehrenreich’s accent is just so grating and he has to detail everything when we should be able to just take in the visuals. What’s worse is that it’s needless, Ethan isn’t sole narrative perspective of the film and without spoiling anything he’s completely removed from the final act.

On top of that it’s really hard to follow all the different threads the story hints at, is Ethan’s mom an important character or not, can Lena choose her fate or can’t she, and why do we introduce all these different Casters but never establish who they are or what powers they have. I mean one of them is an illusionist which turns out to be a big deal in the final act but they never mention his powers or show him using them until that moment. Sure Jeremy Irons, Emma Thompson and Emmy Rossum are all fun as the older Casters but then why isn’t the rest of the film?

I wish I could say that the visual style or fantastical sets made up for all these narrative failing but what’s most shocking about Beautiful Creatures is just how flat and dull it is. Ravenwood manor looks like Tim Burton phoning it in and they have to repaint it every scene to show its supernatural nature on the cheap. The cinematography is so distant you feel like you’re watching every scene through a laboratory window. And the epic confrontation in the finale is shot/reverse shot like Lena and Seraphine are having a fucking dinner date.

It’s sad that Beautiful Creature fails as blisteringly as it does because I don’t want to hate, I want there to be some new supernatural franchise that really shakes up the genre or at least gives a decent role for women. But Beautiful Creatures is not that franchise, it’s not even good enough to be the placeholder till that franchise gets here.