BEFORE: OK, first of all, it's Friday the 13th in October, so really, I need to be at the meeting of horror and bad luck and superstition and all that. What movie could fit the bill? Oh, if only there were a horror series that would be totally appopriate to watch on a Friday the 13th? But what would that be? I should probably learn to stop wishing for things that I can't have. JK.
Secondly, it's Day 2 of New York Comic-Con, I'm working sun-up to sun-down sitting in a booth (a lot easier than carrying all the stuff over, like I did on Wednesday) but also there's a lot of walking around when I'm not at the booth, so again, I point out, I'm exhausted. I shouldn't even BE watching movies, I should be going to sleep as soon as I get home because I have to get up the next day at 7:30 am in order to leave the house at 8:00 am so I can be there at 9:00 am. (OK, really I get there at 9:30 but the boss doesn't need to know that, the convention doesn't really open up each day until 10:00 am.)
Thirdly, it's my wife's birthday and it sucks that I can't spend more of it with her, but we did go out to dinner on Wednesday night, knowing we couldn't be together today and order food in and watch "Hell's Kitchen", airing Thursday nights on FOX-TV. AND she had to take out the garbage tonight without me, she's a trouper, because when I do get home I'll be too tired to lift anything, even a garbage bag. OK, type up the review and then it's straight to bed, I've got one more day at NYCC.
So I don't know about this movie, I'm not even sure if it's a horror movie, because everything I see about it says something different. The IMDB has it under "drama", "fantasy" and "romance", but the TV listings put it under "thriller" and "mystery", so just what the hell IS this film all about? Does it even belong in October? I need it here to make my October chain possible, so I guess we're all going to find out together what this movie's deal is.
Jeremy Irons carries over from "Dead Ringers".
THE PLOT: Ethan Wate longs to escape his small southern town. He meets a mysterious new girl, Lena Duchannes. Together, they uncover dark secrets about their respective families, their history, and their town.
AFTER: Once again, the accidental genius of my linking system shines through - this movie is everything I needed it to be, it's about a Southern family with magical powers - so yeah, fantasy, there's the tie-in with Comic-Con. If "Harry Potter" and the "Lord of the Rings" movies can be represented at Comic-Con, a movie about a family of witches would certainly qualify. And the young woman who falls in love has a curse placed on her - that's bad luck, that's Friday the 13th in a nutshell, right? And it's part romance as she falls for a muggle in the town of Gatlin, SC, and her ominous 16th birthday is approaching - there you go, tie-in with my wife's birthday, and the romance angle to boot. I'm just not sure how it happened, but this movie tied everything together, it couldn't represent my day today any better unless it had a character paying $19 for a burrito in the food court of a convention center.
All right, so what is this film really ABOUT? Jeez, I just watched it and I'm not sure I know, or can even really describe it. (Actually, there are TWO films named "Beautiful Creatures", this one that was released in 2013 and another one, which is some kind of crime film, came out in 2000. Both films were on my watchlist, but now just the other one is.). Yes, this is a romance film with two high-schoolers falling in love in a Southern town, but one of them, Lena, has a family secret - she comes from a family of witches (though they prefer the term "casters") some of whom are bad witches and some of whom are good ones, and her 16th birthday is coming up, when she will be expected to decide what kind of witch she will be, also she is NOT supposed to fall in love with a mere mortal, or muggle, or half-blood or whatever the people with powers are calling the norm humans.
The problem goes back to the Civil War, when Lena's ancestor, a Union witch, fell in love with a Confederate mortal soldier, who couldn't stay away from the witch he loved, and he was shot by Union soldiers, at this point Genevieve, the witch, brought him back to life, and this brought a curse on all her female descendants, that on their 16th birthday they'd all give in to the dark side and become bad witches. Lena and Ethan learn all about this via flashback when they both touch the silver locket that belong to their respective ancestors - she's descended from the witch and he's a descendant of the soldier.
Lena's father does not approve of his daughter's romance with a muggle, as the only way for the curse to be lifted is for someone that Lena loves to die, or something. Meanwhile, two other casters show up to help push Lena toward the dark side - her cousin Ridley and her mother, Sarafine, who has possessed the body of Ethan's friend Link's mother, Mrs. Lincoln. (If this sounds confusing, you're absolutely right, I couldn't keep track of which spirit was possessing which body, or honestly, how all of the characters were related to each other. There are just way too many characters here, and so many of them are youngish women who look and dress the same, this made it very difficult for me to tell which witch is which. (Sorry...)
While these two bad witches are trying to bring Lena over to the dark side, her father, Macon, is working with family friend Amma (who maintains the spellbook library for the casters, or something) to keep her on the good side, by trying to keep her from loving Ethan, because that can only bring bad things, as somebody she cares about is fated to die because of the curse.
Then there's that annual Civil War re-enactment of the Battle of Honey Hill, which, wouldn't you know it, falls exactly on Lena's birthday. What ARE the odds of that? Cousin Ridley seduces Ethan's best friend Link and convinces him to put REAL bullets in the guns, which as you might imagine, is not a very safe thing to do. But if Ethan gets shot and dies, well, at least that would break the curse, wouldn't it? No, really, would it? I'm asking because I'm just not sure, this is another thing that's WAY too complicated - so please, movie, explain to me EXACTLY, if you can, how this curse gets broken - is it from Ethan dying, or Ethan NOT dying? Does Lena have a choice to make about becoming a good or bad witch, or is that choice already made because the family is cursed? What are all the damn rules to this story?
Of course, this isn't really a horror film per se, it's just a film with witches in it, which means that, yes, technically it can fit into an October chain and I'm not going to stress TOO MUCH about that. But this is horror Lite, it's horror for Y/A fiction and it's mixed with enough romance to appeal to teen girls, if that makes any sense. So, yes, OK, it's Southern gothic horror, but it's just not very scary, and usually you'd expect those two things to go hand in hand. Nope, not here. It just can't be a coincidence that this film came out about a year after the "Twilight" film series ended - they probably started working on this when the first "Twilight" film became a hit, and it just took a few years. (Both films are based on Y/A romance/horror novels, come on, I could just FEEL it...)
I could just not make heads or tails out of the ending. Come to think of it, I may have fallen asleep because I was so brain-tired and body-tired from NY Comic Con. I've simply GOT to get some sleep - so no Mountain Dew tonight, and no movie tonight, because I've got one more day of the Con to get through.
Also starring Alden Ehrenreich (last seen in "Solo: A Star Wars Story"), Alice Englert (last seen in "The Power of the Dog"), Viola Davis (last seen in "Black Adam"), Emmy Rossum (last seen in "Cold Pursuit"), Thomas Mann (last seen in "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On"), Emma Thompson (last seen in "Wit"), Eileen Atkins (ditto), Margo Martindale (last heard in "My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea"), Zoey Deutch (last seen in "The Year of Spectacular Men"), Tiffany Boone (last seen in "The Midnight Sky"), Rachel Brosnahan (last seen in "The Courier"), Kyle Gallner (last seen in "Just Before I Go"), Pruitt Taylor Vince (last seen in "Identity"), Robin Skye, Randy Redd, Lance E. Nichols (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), JD Evermore (ditto), Lucy Faust (ditto), Leslie Castay (last seen in "Green Book"), Sam Gilroy (last seen in 'Roman J. Israel, Esq."), Cindy Hogan (last seen in "Boy Erased"), Gwendolyn Mulamba (last seen in "Between Worlds"), Bryan Adrian (last seen in "Charlie Says"), Camille Balsamo (last seen in "The Paperboy"), Lindsay Clift (last seen in "The Big Short"), Milton Crosby, Andrea Frankie (last seen in "Broken City"), Treston Miles, Philippe Radelet, Jackie Tuttle (last seen in "The Whole Truth"), Justine Wachsberger (last seen in "The Twiight Saga: New Moon"), Teri Wyble (last seen in "Reminiscence")
RATING: 5 out of 10 broken windows
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