In 2013 Richard LaGavaranese’s take on Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl’s book “Beautiful Creatures” had a solid supporting cast Emma Thompson, Jeremy Irons, Viola Davis, Emmy Rossum, and interesting up and comers with Alice Englert, Alden Ehrenreich & Thomas Mann but the movie did not performed as well as expected.

The premise follows Ethan who longs to escape his small Southern town. He meets a mysterious new girl, Lena. Together, they uncover dark secrets about their respective families, their history and their town.

Review: I remember when I tried to read the book this came out of, -_- I had to force myself to finish the book was a horrible experience for me but movies are another medium so I went with an open mind to see this movie.

I actually was charmed by it. The special effects look good, the story is interesting enough – they cut out some of the cheesiness that was gushing out of that book – it’s kind of about more than just a love story – Yay. The religious small town narrow-mindedness annoyed me a little bit because I thought it was a bit too stereotypical but as it turns out they really are people like that. I know, it’s scary right?

Anyway, the young actors were cute and actually good, they held their own against Irons, Thompson & Davis. The story-telling though is a bit iffy, they could have done a much better job but I guess they had to please the hardcore fans of this “book” that not one but two people wrote.  

I was pleasantly surprised by Beautiful Creatures, I’m not saying that it’s a great movie but at least it’s slightly above average, so it’s in the green. The film is charming, interesting with a solid cast and beautiful special effects. The timing of its release was probably not right for this movie to succeed, I would have loved to see a sequel because I ain’t picking up the follow up book.

Beautiful Creatures did you see it? What did you think about it?