Beautiful Creatures
Directed by Richard LaGravenese
Written by Richard LaGravenese
Starring: Alden Ehrenreich, Alice Englert, Jeremy Irons, Viola Davis, Emmy Rossum, Emma Thompson, Margo Martindale
Warner Bros. Pictures
Rated PG-13 | 123 Minutes
Release Date: February 14, 2013
Written and directed by Richard LaGravenese (P.S. I Love You), Beautiful Creatures is a supernatural romance film based on the young adult novel by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl.
Young Adult Supernatural Romance is right up there with the Comic Book Superhero Origin Story as one of the most popular (and profitable) subgenres in the film industry right now.
With the success of Harry Potter, The Twilight Saga, and The Hunger Games, studios are snatching up YA titles left and right in hopes of producing the next big blockbuster franchise. Beautiful Creatures is the latest ‘supernatural’ (code for watered-down, unscary horror) teenage romance movie, with a story that mixes elements of Star Wars and Harry Potter with the Spanish moss and Southern accents of True Blood.
LaGravenese’s film plays like Twilight with the sexes reversed. This time it’s the boy who’s mortal. Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich) is a bookish, shy-but-sweet high school kid in the sleepy town of Gatlin, South Carolina. When he isn’t reading Charles Bukowski or Kurt Vonnegut, Wate dreams of escaping his boring, dead-end town and going to college in New York – until he meets newcomer Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert).
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