Culture

Beautiful Creatures is a supernatural fantasy, adapted from a book, which jumps right into things six months before the lead’s, Lena’s, birthday. On her birthday her powers will be claimed for either the “light” (good) or “dark” (evil) depending on the judgement of her “true nature,” which will induce her to act in a good or evil manner for the rest of her days. (Boys have the “will” to choose – don’t even get me started.) Lena is brought to a small hick town, in the middle of the Bible-belt South, by her wealthy town-founder-descendent uncle and catches the eye of the popular jock, who fancies himself intelligent and well-read, and who dreams of leaving town as soon as possible. They fall in love, he finds out the truth of her “Caster” nature and vows to prevent her turning dark, which it turns out is mostly predetermined due to a matriarch predecessor’s curse and has nothing to do with one’s “true nature” after all. Yep.

The movie isn’t terrible, but lacks a lot of background – for example, Lena’s powers are growing, are out of her control, and she is apparently going to be the strongest Caster in recent memory; yet there is no mention of training or practicing control. Perhaps this talent too magically appears on the sweet 16th. A pleasant diversion appears in the guise of Lena’s slutty Siren cousin, who wears a pair of sunglasses to die for, and the local seer-slash-supernatural-librarian who holds creepy séances in the swamp and mothers the motherless Ethan. Glorious Southern accents abound.

The movie is a sufficient distraction should you be a fantasy (read: magic) fan, and it contains enough humor to redeem it slightly. At one point Lena’s evil mother possesses a Bible fanatic (the brilliant Emma Thompson) to speak with the uncle, and asks him “which species would miss mortals” should they kills us all off. I could think of five straight up, and will leave you with a clue for one: it rhymes with “cubic mice.”

2.5/5