[Locke]

So I went ahead and watched Mortal Instruments. I know it got negativity across the board, but so did the Twilight franchise and although I don't love Twilight, I appreciated it more often than I didn't.

I find films like The Mortal Instruments hard to hate, hard to love as well, but being hard to hate is honestly more important. To get it out of the way, yes, Mortal Instruments is as generic and bland as they come, as it tells the story of yet another eternal war between angels and demons, as punctuated by pretty young people in abandoned buildings.

And yes, the central romance which is the shoulders of the narrative carrying the brunt of the emotional weight, is completely without substance or chemistry and is instead utterly corny and clearly an excuse to have two pretty young people grind on one another as much as 12a censorship allows.

And yes, the acting/dialogue is astoundingly bad. Wooden, amateurish actors who seem utterly without help from their director speak entirely in exposition they themselves seem unconvinced by. At some points I felt like I was watching a parody of young adult urban fantasy genre, only to realise that they are intending to play it straight.

But the thing is, Mortal Instruments is also really fun and uses its visual medium well. Whether it's vampires scuttling across the ceiling, loads of fancy sword fighting, an onslaught of demons frozen mid attack, werewolves tearing apart possessed children, boils bursting into tentacles or demon hunters being hit in the face with frying pans, Mortal Instruments has greater focus in its action than any of the other Young Adult franchises out right now on our screens or in our players. No cockteasing and no shaky cam to hide all the violence, just big crazy urban fantasy brawls, full of crazy powers and even crazier gadgets and weapons, as people are volleyed through the air and no room remains untrashed, all wrapped up in some absolutely hilarious humour.