Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
The 2013 film Beautiful Creatures was released in the midst of the glut of YA fantasy franchise hopefuls. Twilight had already hit big, and the previous spring, The Hunger Games tore things up at the box-office. But with that success came an influx of movies aiming for the heart of that same Hunger Games demographic: The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones in 2013, Divergent and The Maze Runner in 2014, The 5th Wave in 2016. None of them did all that well (Divergent succeeded for a while, before that series fell off a cliff in terms of audience interest), and none of them were all that good in the first place.
But Beautiful Creatures was different. Based on the first of a four-book YA series by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, it tells the story of two South Carolina teens: Ethan (Alden Ehrenreich), who falls for the enigmatic Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert), who turns out to be the scion of a family of witches who are notorious in the small southern town. There’s a lot of business about good witches and dark witches and how good witches go bad because of a curse. We meet Lena’s bad-witch cousin Ridley (a never-better Emmy Rossum chewing every bit of scenery and striking every pose possible) who seems almost eager to have Lena claimed by the darkness as she was.
We meet Lena’s family, a shockingly well-cast brood that includes Jeremy Irons, Margo Martindale, and Eileen Atkins. In town, the upstanding Christian woman railing in church against the the Duchannes family is played by Emma Thompson. Back at home with Ethan, he’s looked after by friend of the family Viola Davis. It’s an insanely accomplished cast, and that’s before even getting to Ehrenreich, who gives a performance that ought to have made him a household name years before Hail, Caesar! There are precious few young men in Hollywood who can pull off a teen character who manages to be sensitive (but not drippy), funny (but not obnoxious), and strong (but not posturing), all while sharing A+ chemistry with his co-star.
The plot mechanics of the film are not its strongest suit, but this is a movie that succeeds wildly on charm, audacity, and humor. It realized that it’s a movie about modern-day witches in South Carolina, and it luxuriates in that and lets its phenomenal cast do the rest. It’s a major crowd-pleaser, if only crowds had bothered to show up for it. The movie bombed significantly enough that no sequels were ever planned, and the film itself got pretty much swept under the rug. Which is a damn shame.
But now Beautiful Creatures is on Netflix, and one of the fringe benefits of having Netflix is that box-office bombs can be reclaimed by an audience that’s ready to accept them. If there is any justice in Hollywood, Beautiful Creatures will experience a robust second life on Netflix. At least as robust as Margo Martindale’s pet peacock. Or Emma Thompson’s southern accent, for that matter.
