Beautiful Creatures Information

Beautiful Creatures is a 2013 American romantic fantasy film based upon the novel of the same name by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. The film is directed by Richard LaGravenese and stars Alden Ehrenreich and Alice Englert.

Plot

In Gatlin, South Carolina, Ethan Wate awakens from a recurring dream of a girl he doesn't know. In narration, he describes his enjoyment of reading banned books, his despair of his small-town existence and his dreams of leaving for college. Arriving for his first day of junior year, Ethan notices newcomer Lena Duchannes, who resembles the girl he has been dreaming about. The other students do not take kindly to her and spread gossip regarding her reclusive uncle, Macon Ravenwood, and her family being devil worshippers. Overhearing these whispers, Lena tenses and the classroom windows shatter, amplifying the fears and suspicions of the class and the townspeople at large that she is a witch.

On a drive home, Ethan nearly runs over Lena, whose car has broken down. He gives her a ride home and the two bond over their shared love of poetry and having both lost their mothers. Ethan drops Lena off but later finds a locket and returns to the mansion to give it to her as a present. The touch of the locket triggers a shared flashback to the Civil War, after which he awakens at his home. Macon disapproves of their growing romance and conspires with Ethan's family friend, Amma, to keep the two separated but Ethan persists and Lena confesses that she and her family are "casters", capable of performing a variety of magical spells such as changing the weather and illusion casting. On her 16th birthday, Lena's true nature will steer her towards either the light or the dark and Lena fears being consumed by evil and hurting those she loves. Ethan insists she is responsible for her own choices and that regardless of her insecurities she is a good person.

Matters are complicated by the arrival of two immensely powerful dark casters who aim to push Lena to the dark: Ridley, Lena's provocative cousin/childhood friend and Sarafine, Lena's mother, who has possessed Mrs. Lincoln, the mother of Ethan's friend Link. and foresees Lena becoming a more powerful caster than her. Lena and Ethan use the locket to re-experience the flashback in its entirety and it reveals their ancestors, caster Genevieve Duchannes and mortal Confederate soldier Ethan Carter were in love. Ethan was shot in battle and Genevieve revived him using a forbidden spell that caused her to go dark and curse the women of the Duchannes family line. They consult with Amma, who is in fact a seer/keeper of a caster library beneath the town library. The most ancient of these books, the Book of Moons, reveals the secret to undoing the curse: one of Lena's loved ones has to die to sacrifice the curse. Unwilling to take Ethan's life, Lena instead erases his memories of their time together.

Ridley seduces and enchants Link and gives him a bullet to use in an upcoming Civil War reenactment of the Battle of Honey Hill taking place on Lena's birthday. During the reenactment, Link and Ethan agree to "kill" each-other so they can ditch the reenactment. While at the ceremony for her 16th birthday, Lena feels the shock of the curse being broken and runs off to Ethan, clutching his dying body as Ridley and Sarafine egg her on to give in to her grief and accept the dark willingly. Lena lashes out in anger, sending lightning strikes through the crowd reenactors until Ethan transforms into Macon, having previously disguised himself as Ethan (with Larkin's help) to become the sacrifice needed to break the curse. His dying words are for Lena to "Claim yourself" and she causes the moon to disappear, stopping it from claiming her for the dark. Lena allows Ridley to flee and pulls Sarafine from Mrs. Lincoln's body, defeating her.

Months later, a still-amnesiac Ethan stops by the library to visit Amma before leaving for a college campus tour with Link and apologizes to Lena for not having gotten to know her during their time in Gatlin. Lena is then seen in the caster library, where it is revealed that she has claimed herself as a half dark/light caster. Meanwhile, just after Link drives past the town line, Ethan recalls their memories together and gets out of the car to yell Lena's name. Lena hears and the screen cuts to black.

Cast

• Alden Ehrenreich as Ethan Lawson Wate
• Alice Englert as Lena Duchannes
• Jeremy Irons as Macon Ravenwood
• Viola Davis as Amma
• Emmy Rossum as Ridley Duchannes
• Thomas Mann as Wesley Jefferson "Link" Lincoln
• Emma Thompson as Mavis Lincoln/Sarafine
• Margo Martindale as Aunt Del
• Eileen Atkins as Emmaline Duchannes (Gramma)
• Zoey Deutch as Emily Asher
• Rachel Brosnahan as Genevieve Duchannes
• Kyle Gallner as Larkin Ravenwood
• Pruitt Taylor Vince as Mr. Lee

Production

Alcon Entertainment purchased the rights to Beautiful Creatures in 2009, with director Richard LaGravenese signing on soon after to write and direct the movie. Casting for the film began in late 2011, and in February 2012, Viola Davis was cast as Amma. Soon after, Jack O'Connell and Alice Englert were announced to be playing the lead characters of Ethan Wate and Lena Duchannes. O'Connell later dropped out of the film due to a scheduling conflict, with Alden Ehrenreich assuming the role of Ethan. Further casting included Emma Thompson as Sarafine and Mrs. Lincoln and Jeremy Irons as Lena's uncle Macon Ravenwood. Of the character of Lena, Englert stated that "Lena is like most girls when you feel massively insecure".

Principal photography was originally scheduled to begin April 23, 2012, in New Orleans and took place, said LaGravanese, beginning "I think, April 16th, and then we shot until June 26th, and then post[-production] was for me from July 5th to December 17th." LaGravenese chose to incorporate practical special effects along with computer-based ones for certain scenes, as Emmy Rossum described: "[W]hen we walked on to the stage and realized the chandelier does actually move, the chairs did actually spin, the table did actually spin ... it was all very exciting." On September 19, 2012 the first trailer for Beautiful Creatures was released.

Camille Balsamo played Katherine Duchannes in a sequence cut from the film, LaGravenese said:

Release

The film held its official US premiere on February 11, 2013 in New York City.

The film's release date was originally on February 13, 2013, but distributor Warner Bros. later pushed the date to Thursday, February 14, 2013. However, the film was still released in Sweden on the 13th, a day before the film's domestic release date.

Reception

The film has received mixed reviews from critics; it has a 45% positive rating on the film critics aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 156 reviews, with the consensus stating: "Charming romantic leads and esteemed supporting cast aside, Beautiful Creatures is a plodding YA novel adaptation that feels watered down for the Twilight set".

On Metacritic, the film received a "metascore" of 51% (out of 38 reviews), indicating a mixed or average consensus.

Owen Gleiberman, in Entertainment Weekly, gave the film a B-, writing, "Beautiful Creatures is arriving in a market-place full of Twilight junkies still eager for their supernatural teen-romantic fix, and the film's concept couldn't be clearer: It's Twilight with the sexes reversed. This time it's the boy who's the mortal: moody, bookish Ethan, the outsider in his sleepy small town." Gleiberman added that though the film "is lushly pictorial and not-too-badly acted... The audience, like Ethan, spends way too much time waiting around for Lena to learn whether she's a good girl or a bad girl." The film review website ScreenRant called the film "a choppy and melodramatic experience with very little payoff beyond the central love story. Worse yet, overlooking the usual on-the-nose dialogue about eternal love and sacrifice, this tale of star-crossed sweethearts is especially cheesy and unconvincing " even when compared to similarly heavy-handed young adult novel-turned-movies. Fans of the supernatural romance sub-genre will get about what they expect..."

David Denby of The New Yorker wrote that the movie "is a classic example of the confusions and the outright blunders that can overtake talented people who commit themselves to a concept driven purely by the movie marketplace... Alas, the satirical energy and Ethan's bright talk dissipate after a while." He praises a scene from the Civil War flashback which "appears as Ethan and Lena are watching a movie in a local theatre, but only they can see it" as "an interesting idea that I wish LaGravenese had pursued as a parallel narrative. This kind of movie, however, demands not interesting ideas but whooshing spectacle and madly redundant climaxes and a soundtrack filled with thuds and a shouting female chorus."

Box office

The film grossed $10,124,912 during its opening weekend (including its Thursday release date), slightly under-performing based on media expectations. As of March 20, 2013, the film has grossed a domestic total of $19,189,880 and an international total of $36,488,533 for a worldwide total of $55,678,413.