Beautiful Creatures — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Production

Alcon Entertainment purchased the rights to Beautiful Creatures in 2009, with the director Richard LaGravenese signing on soon after to write and direct the movie. Casting began in late 2011, and in February 2012, Viola Davis was cast as Amma. Soon after, Jack O'Connell and Alice Englert were announced to play the lead characters of Ethan Wate and Lena Duchannes. O'Connell later dropped out because of a scheduling conflict, with Alden Ehrenreich assuming the role of Ethan. Further casting included Emma Thompson as Sarafine and Mrs. Lincoln and Jeremy Irons as Lena's uncle, Macon Ravenwood. Of the character of Lena, Englert stated that "Lena is like most girls when you feel massively insecure."

Principal photography was originally scheduled to begin 23 April 2012 in New Orleans and it took place, according to LaGravenese, from "I think, April 16th, and then we shot until June 26th, and then post[-production] was for me from July 5th to December 17th." LaGravenese chose to incorporate practical special effects along with computer-based ones for certain scenes, as Emmy Rossum described: "[W]hen we walked on to the stage and realized the chandelier does actually move, the chairs did actually spin, the table did actually spin.... it was all very exciting." On 19 September 2012, the first trailer for Beautiful Creatures was released.

Camille Balsamo played Genevieve Katherine Duchannes in a sequence cut from the film; LaGravenese said:

There was one part that I shot on green screen where I had all these actresses playing all the different Duchannes women from different periods [from the Civil War on]. And my costume designer, Jeffrey Kurland, had gowns and things, one was from the turn of the century, one was from the '20s, one was from the ’40s, one was from the '60s, and they were going to appear in the first flashback and at the end of the movie, and then I cut them.... It was just an idea that didn't work.The original soundtrack was composed by thenewno2 and released by WaterTower Music. Its musical style was referred to as "swamptronic", a term coined by LaGravenese, and it was recorded at Abbey Road. Dhanni Harrison, son of George Harrison, used some of his father's guitars and equipment in recording the soundtrack.

Critical response

The film has received mixed reviews from critics. It has a 47% rating on review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 180 reviews, with the site's consensus stating: "Charming romantic leads and esteemed supporting cast aside, Beautiful Creatures is a plodding YA novel adaptation that feels watered down for the Twilight set".

On Metacritic, the film received a score of 52/100 based on 40 reviews, indicating mixed or average reviews.

Owen Gleiberman, in Entertainment Weekly, gave the film a "B−", writing, "Beautiful Creatures is arriving in a market-place full of Twilight junkies still eager for their supernatural teen-romantic fix, and the film's concept couldn't be clearer: It's Twilight with the sexes reversed. This time it's the boy who's the mortal: moody, bookish Ethan, the outsider in his sleepy small town." Gleiberman added that though the film "is lushly pictorial and not-too-badly acted... the audience, like Ethan, spends way too much time waiting around for Lena to learn whether she's a good girl or a bad girl."

The film review website ScreenRant called the film "a choppy and melodramatic experience with very little payoff beyond the central love story. Worse yet, overlooking the usual on-the-nose dialogue about eternal love and sacrifice, this tale of star-crossed sweethearts is especially cheesy and unconvincing – even when compared to similarly heavy-handed young adult novel-turned-movies. Fans of the supernatural romance subgenre will get about what they expect...."

David Denby of The New Yorker wrote that the movie "is a classic example of the confusions and the outright blunders that can overtake talented people who commit themselves to a concept driven purely by the movie marketplace.... Alas, the satirical energy and Ethan's bright talk dissipate after a while." He praises a scene from the Civil War flashback which "appears as Ethan and Lena are watching a movie in a local theatre, but only they can see it" as "an interesting idea that I wish LaGravenese had pursued as a parallel narrative. This kind of movie, however, demands not interesting ideas but whooshing spectacle and madly redundant climaxes and a soundtrack filled with thuds and a shouting female chorus."

Scott Mendelson of Forbes magazine called the film "shockingly good" and encouraged viewers who missed it to check it out on video.

CinemaScore audience polls gave the film a B grade.

Beautiful Creatures was featured on episode 187 of the comedy podcast How Did This Get Made?.

Beautiful Creatures

Comments

Beautiful Creatures

Trailer

Where to watch

Family guide

Cast & crew

Comments