Ethan Wate is suffering from insomnia and dreams where he's trying to reach an unknown girl. When school starts, he meets a new student - a niece of infamous inhabitant of the town - Lena Duchannes. She seems just as much an outsider as Ethan feels, and he becomes very interested in Lena. With Lena he learns very much about Lena and her family, himself and their shared past and fate.
I actually own the novel. I just haven't read it jet. So once again I see the movie before the book. I don't know if this system is working out for me. Anyway, I mostly expected some sort of better version of Twilight. Well, partly Beautiful Creatures is like Twilight - main character meets someone who ain't exactly a mortal, and meets their family etcetera. But Beautiful Creatures had some sort of beauty in it, something that Twilight didn't have.
Of course Beautiful Creatures seemed to be a bit problematic on how, well, "determined" Ethan seemed. I mean Lena asked him to go away at one point, but he firmly wanted to stay by her. I mean sure, we can see Lena didn't really want Ethan to go away, but still, that scene kinda promotes the idea how stalking and persisting is romantic. Well it isn't, it just seems creepy. But thank god it didn't seem to be like that all the time. I mean many times Ethan should've left, but most of the time it wasn't Lena who said so, but her family. I'm not saying their relationship was healthy, I don't know if it was. It seemed mostly really weird and complicated, but when would anything in fiction be very simple?
Visually Beautiful Creatures was astonishing. I don't know how to put it, and I don't even know what I liked the most. I mean the cinematography was amazing, and so were the special effects. But then again the milieu might have been too beautiful, I mean the town was described as boring and what else, but still it seemed like a very beautiful place. Sure, most of that is because it's close to nature and all that, but even the town centre seemed like a really nice place. Of course, yeah, the town being boring and annoying place was probably mostly because of the people, but movies have something books don't: you can show so much more. So why not play around a little bit and make the whole place seem really annoying and boring and whatever it would be. I mean it wouldn't make the film "less attractive", I mean movies don't always have to be "pretty", even if they are fantasy romance movies. The people and the story give it enough.
Also I'm bothered how white the cast was. Like there was one character of colour there who actually had importance. Oh wait, there was one more, but she was mostly annoying and a sort of sidekick for another character, who was white. This seems unrealistic. Or is that what things are like in South Carolina? I doubt it, I've seen more people of colour in our town and hell, we are white as fuck.
But I did like Beautiful Creatures. And I loved how Lena didn't turn out to be just a manic pixie dream girl. (In case that you are unfamiliar with the expression, read about it here. And apparently there's another version of that, but instead of female / male "arrangement" it's black / white. The name for that seems like a slur though so I won't repeat it here.) I mean in a way Lena was a manic pixie dream girl, but she was also her own person, and didn't just exist for Ethan. As I've heard or read somewhere, being manic pixie dream girl is okay if it's not simply for a male character. So I do warmly recommend the movie.
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
7 / 10
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