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I just got back from watching this movie. I had such high hopes for it. I love the archetype of the witch, my favorite monster. So where do I begin? I think I will start with the bad so I can end on a positive note.
The movie is a mixture of "Harry Potter", "Twilight", and "Hair Spray". The Southern accents are atrocious. The movie does not give the feeling that it is set in a "real" universe but always unfolds as if it is a fairy tale. There is little to no character development. Every single Southern cliche is crammed into this movie. There are a couple of scenes of Christian-bashing. The movie has some sexist scenes which really surprised me since the author of the books is a woman. I'll go ahead and spoil this little bit. In Beautiful Creatures witches don't like the term witch and prefer the term 'caster' instead. Well, when a caster turns 16 they are claimed for either the darkness or the light. Male casters are masters of their own fate and can choose to be either of the darkness of the light. Female casters are slaves to their destinies and cannot choose. They are simply claimed by either good or evil despite their free will. The way it is presented is that a woman has both a false self and secret self. When young the female doesn't know her secret self and when she turns 16 it rears it's head and that's who she really is, either good or evil. So men are masters of their fate while women are slaves to destiny. I really disliked that. Another thing I disliked is the use of the "magical negro", a supporting black character who has magical powers and who saves the day but has zero character development. It's like they only exist to save white people. There are like 2 black characters in this movie and the main woman is of the "magical negro" variety. That really bothered me. I really disliked the slant toward evil. Evil or dark casters are portrayed as far more seductive and fun while the good casters all look like eccentric drag queens. There are sub-plots and stories/elements that are not properly covered and don't quite make sense. There is a snow scene where the snow looks incredibly fake and none of the snow gets in Lena, the female lead's hair. Then the full moon is shown during the day time. Now, the moon can appear in the day time sky but it never appears in the day light as a full moon. The full moon always rises after sunset. Finally, winter time in South Carolina is portrayed as if there are no seasons. Like it's summer year-round.
So now for the good parts. Unfortunately this will be a rather short paragraph. The good things about this movie is that the scenery was very beautiful. The special effects were also good. There is a scene where the "magical negro" is offering food at the grave of her uncle. She was giving her uncle some of his favorite food in life in return for his help. That was a good scene. That's about it.
On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest, I give this movie a 5. It's perfectly average in every way.
