[Locke]

Rewatched Beautiful Creatures on Bluray.

To get it out of the way, the Bluray presentation is poor but I think most of that is down to the cinematography. It's a stylish movie, that has some good production design, but half the time scenes appear to be out of focus and the things that aren't are buried in noise. No shot looks quite the same, but each is as equally shitty. Overall I think the word I'd use is "flat", all the out of focus backgrounds, the heavy noise in the foreground, it just has no depth at all.

In terms of the movie? Well first, let's talk about characters. Ethan takes a long time to like but when you realise how real and lived in he feels, warts and all, he suddenly becomes endearing. Bella Swan - the most common example - is a character that was the centre of the universe in her story no matter what stage of her arc she was going through but Ethan is always no one and the movie never loses sight of that. The fact he doesn't become the Chosen One or whatever shit is what ends up making him so special. He's just an ordinary teen caught in an ancient battle between good and evil and he's forced to watch and be pulled to and fro spending the entire movie utterly helpless to change any event that plays out, or at least change them in any meaningful way. That may sound like a deathwish for a character but instead he becomes the anchor for the audience because of this and because he remains ordinary, the movie never loses us either. He's also acted well by the incredibly charming Alden Ehrenreich.

It's a shame then that Lena is a complete failure of a character. We'll get to the failings of the film as a story later but speaking right now of characters, Lena's premise is she - like Katniss Everdeen - is going to prove that girls can have the power in the Young Adult genre. However, as much as I dislike the Hunger Games, at least what Katniss goes through is real.

With Lena all the so called power she has is just pretence. The most we get is overly dramatic staredowns and contests to see who is the worst actress, it never feels like Lena is actually in a control. And yes, I am aware that is the whole point of the story, but it seems like such a bizarre creative decision to give women the power - something so rare in this genre - only to make it the whole premise that the power is then stolen from them. Why pretend? You're no fucking different!

Even aside from all that Lena doesn't seem nice inside or out, anyway. Shallow maybe but Alice Englert is not an attractive woman but Lena isn't even a nice person anyway. She's mean, naive and stroppy, a cartoon parody of a real teenage girl where the negatives are magnified and the positives are hidden. Ethan deserves better.

This is especially problematic when the two leads coming together is supposed to be the main drive of the narrative. The romance is well realised, and moves at a nice natural, flowing pace but it doesn't count for much when you can't stand the female lead. Maybe to some extent this is intentional but a turd is always going to be a turd. It's basically a romance for the Tumblr generation, I couldn't think of much worse to say.

Luckily outside of them is the much stronger supporting cast. Irons and Thompson chew so much scenery between them I'm amazed there's any left to chew by the end. I can't tell if they two of them just don't care - especially Irons who only attempts an accent for about one in every ten lines - or if they decided to just have fun in their roles. Whatever they're trying to do, it comes off great on screen, even if the enjoyment gleamed from it was probably never intended, at least not in the shape it comes.

Ridley is probably the only character I genuinely liked from the get go. Rossum, at times, seems a little out of her depth but Ridley is one of the few female characters in the film who actually gets to use the power she is promised. And her flashback, and general character arc, is about the deepest the film gets. I'd have honestly liked a whole movie about her.

Narratively Beautiful Creatures is like a concert hall after hours, vast and empty. It constantly raises hot-button issues, usually with some urban fantasy guise, but it doesn't have anything to actually say about them. What this leaves is an incredibly shallow, pretentious movie, that is all exposition and no substance. This is a shame, as although most of the mythology here is clearly borrowed, some of it does seem to be going somewhere interesting. It never does, though.

Well, to the say the movie has nothing to say, would be unfair. It has lots to say when it comes to Christianity, it just has nothing nice to say about it. The movie takes every opportunity to insult the faith, I am not a Christian or of any faith for that matter, but I see no need to take sweeping stabs at any religion for insults sake. Faith itself is harmless, it's the people who follow it who are the issue, something the movie only ever half understands.

When it isn't offending every Christian in the theatre, it's offending everyone else in it as well, most notably in that it seems to believe being ordinary is much like some sort of fatal disease. I don't know why I ever praised this movie, but I'm going back to Twilight, this doesn't hold up to multiple viewings at all.