Beautiful Creatures

Plot synopsis:
Sixteen-year-old Ethan Wate lives in Gatlin, South Carolina, with his widowed father. Lena Duchannes is a mysterious girl with magical powers who appears in Ethan's recurring nightmares. Though she initially rebuffs his attempts at interacting with her, they eventually become friends despite harassment from other classmates that almost gets her expelled. Lena's uncle Macon Ravenwood also attempts to keep Ethan and Lena apart to protect them. Every member of Lena's family is a "Caster" with magical powers. On Lena's sixteenth birthday, she will be "claimed" as either a Light or Dark Caster, but she is terrified of becoming an evil Dark Caster.
Meanwhile, Ethan discovers a locket at Ravenwood Manor, Lena's home, that induces visions of Lena's ancestor Genevieve Duchannes and Ethan's ancestor Ethan Carter Wate, who were engaged during the Civil War. Through the locket, they discover that Genevieve tried to resurrect Ethan Carter Wate using the magical Book of Moons. Due to Genevieve's use of the spell, the Book has the ability to determine which of the Duchannes will be Light or Dark. Ethan and Lena find the Book of Moons in Genevieve's grave and study it for ways to prevent Lena from becoming Dark. Furthermore, Lena is continuously spiritually attacked by a Dark Caster named Sarafine, whom is actually her mother. While the Duchannes cannot prevent the attacks, Ethan's presence seems to stop them.
Lena's sixteenth birthday is celebrated by Ethan, the Duchannes, and her classmates. Macon forbids Lena to attend the party set up by her classmates, but Lena sneaks out anyway and confesses her love to Ethan, who reciprocates. Sarafine reveals herself at the party, accompanied by incubus Hunting Ravenwood. Sarafine tells Lena that she will be able to Claim herself for the Dark or Light at midnight. If she chooses to go Dark, all the Light Casters in her family will die, but she would be able to have a previously-impossible physical relationship with Ethan. If she chooses to go Light, all the Dark Casters in her family will die, including Macon. A fight occurs, culminating in Sarafine escaping and Hunting nearly killing Macon. After Ethan gathers the other Duchannes for help, Ethan searches for Lena, but instead meets Sarafine, who kills him. At midnight, Lena uses her power over nature to block out the moonlight, preventing her from being claimed. She recites a spell from the Book of Moons to resurrect Ethan. The spell works, but as payment, the Book kills Macon.

Tags: violence, comedy, neo noir

Review:
I think perhaps lots of people were put off by the director's claims of it's dark humour and general shockingness whereas in reality (or unless I am unknowingly deeply psychologically disturbed) it wasn't all that bad.
Their characters of Dorothy and Petula never came close to being your stereotypical man's-eye women.
This reversal on the general way of gangster/thriller films was great stuff.
Ordinarily I would not have gone to see a film like this as I am not a big fan of British cinema (although I enjoy stuff like Lock Stock & 2SB), but I am very glad I got to see this preview.The director Bill Eagle was at the preview, and as he mentioned before the film "if you don't think that death, S&M, mutilation of dead bodies, and drugs etc are appropriate for a comedy, then you better leave now".
The sense of humour in this film is indeed quite gross in places.The basic plotline is that Petula and Dorothy both have violent boyfriends, and after one of them goes into a blind rage and almost kills Petula, Dorothy accidentally kills him.
While this may sound like a quite depressing drama, it is actually done with a very tongue in cheek humour sometimes and is actually very funny (although this is probably not the sort of thing we should be laughing at!Overall, if you enjoyed the dark comedy of Lock Stock, like the quirkiness of British movies, and can withstand a barrage of jokes in the worst possible taste (way more dark and gross than a lot of other movies labelled as "gross out comedy" or whatever), I would recommend going to see this film.
I also think it was filmed well for an small time movie.
So with great humour, original characters and an interesting plot that keeps you guessing what will happen next i think its a thoroughly enjoyable film.Not to mention the adorable dog Pluto.
I know its done in tongue in cheek but this story seems to ramble and then aimlessly wander about, especially towards the end when I had grown tired of this messy story and the film wants to trick you and not end when you think it should.
Susan Lynch and Rachel Weisz are engaging enough but its to bad that the material isn't better.
This film reminds me of Bound or Goodbye Lover but with an british ala Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels style.
My wife and I just got done watching this, quirky and funny movie, and loved it!
Wanting so hard to be a black comedy thriller along the lines of Shallow Grave or Blood Simple, Beautiful Creatures is ultimately little more than worthy of mid-week TV viewing..
Dark comedy-like film - nice twists , nice direction style & some really clever jokes, especially if you got a sick sense of humour, hehe.
The British have the reputation for being an eccentric race, and "Beautiful Creatures" is one of the eccentric oddities that the British film industry occasionally comes up with.
The film, which is set in Glasgow, can best be described as an attempt to remake "Thelma and Louise" as a black comedy.
A young woman named Dorothy comes to the defence of another young woman, Petula, who is being beaten up in the street by her abusive boyfriend, Brian.
In the struggle Dorothy hits Brian over the head with a length of metal piping, which leads to his death after the women have taken his unconscious body back to her flat.
Instead, they decide to pretend that Brian has been kidnapped and to blackmail his wealthy brother, Ron. The complex plot also involves a corrupt policeman, Dorothy's boyfriend (just as unpleasant as Brian) and a pink-tinted dog.The original "Thelma and Louise" took a similar theme but treated it seriously, without any attempt to turn it into a comedy.
Those two films work better than "Beautiful Creatures", largely the leading characters are much more believable and, at times, sympathetic.
Susan Lynch and Rachel Weisz do not succeed to anything like the same extent.
I wonder if she took this part because she needed to appear in an oddball independent film in order to convince herself that she was still a bohemian free spirit despite having acted in Hollywood blockbusters like "The Mummy".Black comedy can be a difficult subject to get right, either in the theatre or the cinema.
Done well, black comedy can be tasteless but hilarious; done badly, it is merely tasteless.Unfortunately, "Beautiful Creatures" falls into the second category.
There was presumably some attempt at feminist satire on male attitudes to women, but this does not really work as Dorothy and Petula come across as being just as twisted in their attitudes as any of the males on display.
There is plenty that is black, with plot developments involving drugs, violence, cruelty and various sexual perversions, but little that is comic.
Beautiful Creatures is a British dark comedy about these two women who meet up with each other under undue circumstances and plotted a scheme so that they will come out ahead.
This is an entertaining black comedy but lacks the pacing, clever script, and bizarre edge that distinguish the best of this sub-genre of films.
Weisz, sporting a blonde do, and Lynch are pretty good, playing a variation on the Thelma and Louise theme.
This is the only feature film made by TV director Eagles, and he lacks the absurdist touch of the likes of the Coen Brothers, Guy Ritchie, and Quinton Tarantino.
please!), too contrived for a crime caper (let me get this straight: the whole mess begins when a dog bites off a corpse's finger?) and too reverse-sexist (all the men are vicious, sleazy b******s) for its female characters to be even the least bit sympathetic.
What I liked about the film "Beautiful Creatures" is that the lead female characters, Petula and Dorothy, are not strong women initially.
There is an uninhibited quality about her performances that make every character she takes on totally believable.Beautiful Creatures was real fun to watch.
Susan Lynch and Rachael Weisz are superb actresses and seemed to enjoy the filming and this comes over.
just the kind of movie to fill an evening and it makes you want to watch it again and wonder what you missed the first time as it is so warped you were undoubtedly laughing and probably missed something.
It's a thoroughly routine piece of Nineties film-making, a fourth-rate Tarantino swipe with side-grabs at Bound and Thelma & Louise.
Part of what makes a movie good is that the viewer can follow the plot.
Rachel Weisz has starred in much better movies ("Sunshine", "The Constant Gardener"), so why would you want to focus on this?
After escaping an attack from her abusive man, attractive Susan Lynch (as Dorothy) decides to leave him.
He is attacking beautiful blonde Rachel Weisz (as Petula).
While not funny, the bathtub scene does suggest "Beautiful Creatures" is a comedy.
Lynch is attracted to Weisz' platinum blonde locks and plays hairdresser...The women team-up and agree about how to dispose of one lover.
In return, Pluto plays a magic trick with Mr. Glen's ring finger...Later, Weisz gets to take a swing at Lynch's husband; here and there, director Bill Eagles provides a lot of synchronicity.
It should have been the women.**** Beautiful Creatures (8/23/00) Bill Eagles ~ Rachel Weisz, Susan Lynch, Alex Norton, Iain Glen.
And "Beautiful Creatures" just happens to have a fun flow, along the film noir lines.
A simple mixture of a black comedy & a mild crime thriller, ultimately making up for a an effective 90 minutes of entertainment, wrapped up on a comfortable budget, supported by a decent enough cast.
A grain of that noir-comedy touch the Coen Brothers sometimes use, done UK-style (but without Guy Ritchie's hectic pacing & editing) and more in sync really with films like "Head Above Water" (1996) and the more recent "The Ice Harvest" (2005).
If you've liked any of the stuff I just mentioned, you'll probably have some fun with "Beautiful Creatures" too.
It stars the perfectly capable Susan Lynch & Rachel Weisz, both forced by coincidence into the role of a femme fatale duo, desperately trying to solve & ultimately exploit the messy situation they've gotten themselves into..
This is a refreshing & darkly humorous, albeit violent, film about women who bond together when things go from bad to worse after they try to help one another.
None of the men these women in "Beautiful Creatures" are involved are at all redeeming, however.
Still it's a not often look at the underside of smart women getting involved with some yukky guys and trying hard not to end up destitute & beaten down..
A feel-good movie with an interesting plot and ending.
An unusual mixture of three things: British comedy, Violent thriller, Role reversal - where the women really are the main characters and all the surrounding men are two dimensional stereotypes - violent and/or lecherous who get their just rewards.
We sat through "Beautiful Creatures" in the hope that it would get funny or at least get better.
I suppose it is meant to be a comedy but I could find nothing amusing, as the film-makers seem to think is, with violence again women which it at the crux of this movie.
The moments which could have shocked or otherwise moved us were lost since they were cliched and predictable.I can't let this go without making one crucial observation; I saw this movie primarily because of Rachel Weisz.
Thankfully DNA has bought us a British film that has the conviction to look further than `Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' for its cues and is more than the sum of its parts of it's soundtrack.Adapted from a script by Simon Donald, this is the first feature directed by Bill Eagles who was last seen directing housewives favourite T Robson Green in the highly acclaimed TV thriller `Touching Evil.'Since the mid nineteen-nineties British cinema has done little for the Scottish tourist board and with a heady mix of violence, drugs and dubious sexual practices `Beautiful Creatures' is unlikely to reverse this trend.
They struggle to maintain control of a situation that spirals out of control culminating in kidnapping, murder and a severed body part.In fact, as a low budget Scottish-set ensemble piece led by the darkest humour, it is pretty inevitable that there are going to be comparisons made to `Shallow Grave.' On balance this wouldn't be entirely fair, whilst Danny Boyle may have got there first, `Beautiful Creatures' is undoubtedly a more ambitious film.The film puts a wilfully perverse spin on the noir thriller by transplanting the women who normally exist at the peripheries of the plot and foregrounding them as the action leads.
They contrast sharply with the female leads played by Susan Lynch and a peroxide-wigged Rachel Weisz who offer precious moments of humanity and warmth in the relentlessly dark, and at times shocking, script.A twisted humour propels the story, which at times sits uneasily with the overall noir tone of the film, particularly when the jokes are at their most throwaway.
However, the black comedy gives the film an edge and offers the audience guilty laughs when the plot is at its most oppressive.
DNA should be applauded for backing what is a brave attempt at originality in what has become an increasingly lazy British movie scene and for producing a film that should appeal to Coen Brothers and David Lynch fans as much as to those of Guy Ritchie and Danny Boyle..
"Beautiful Creatures" is a light-hearted dark comedy which tells of a pair of chance meeting babes who have had trouble with the men in their lives.
Dorothy (Susan Lynch) is out to the movies when she encounters Petula (Rachel Weisz) being abused by her boyfriend Brian McMinn.
Dorothy doesn't want to go to jail and Petula comes up with a plan to dispose of the body.
The dark humor in this "comedy" attempts to mimic films like Trainspotting or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels but never even comes close.
Ripped off ideas from other films, cliches, bad jokes, sexist stereotypical characters, and a plot where the writers obviously wrote themselves into a wall so had to invent some outragous new thing to keep the story going.I heard someone say "Dorothy and Petula never came close to being your stereotypical man's-eye women."   Thats the problem.
know when to stop!Some good things about the movie, but mainly it was a terrible idea masquerading behind a big budget look: big actresses, big sound, big look, no plot..
I was excited at the opportunity of seeing Beautiful Creatures as a special preview screening, as the film won't be out on general release until January of next year.
I now find myself having to write a review of the movie, both for the IMDB and my student newspaper, and I am unsure where to start.Director Bill Eagles attended the screening and told the audience before the film that the humour within it would be realtively dark.
This did not prepare me, however, for exactly how dark a sense of humour you would need to have in order to find the film funny at all.The story itself seemed to be a promising one - 2 women, Petula and Dorothy, are the victims of domestic violence at the hands of their respective partners.
A chance meeting ends with Petula's boyfriend dead, and the rest of the film follows the women as they try to cover up what they have done, albeit in self defence.
The film proved to be one of stereotypes - Petula as the blond pretty one who all the blokes want to sleep with and Dorothy as the dark haired ugly one.
There is not one single male in the film with any good qualities (perhaps the point of the film), and the continual sexual violence that they show towards the women comes across as a complete and unrelenting indulgence of male fantasy.
The moments which were supposed to be funny involved such things as drug taking and violence towards animals.
Still riding high on the Guy Ritchie bandwagon, this falls into the same category as Circus, Rancid Aluminium, Love Honour and Obey, and Hard Men.These were all films with major flaws, but for some reason, apart from Hard Men, they were all highly watchable, with some very kooky elements to them.You really had to be around at the time of the films releases to appreciate this particular sub genre, and this one is no different, having been critically panned on initial release, there was something screaming in the film stating 'I am a very good idea, but poorly executed'.And while the film has a very poor narrative and so many clichés, it's hard not to enjoy it.Basically Thelma and Louise for generation X, Lynch and Weisz are really very good in their roles, but the writers have made a fatal error in making all the male characters rogues, and all the females victims, right up until the third act.There's red herrings galore come the final act, but it's just too bonkers to be a bad movie, its never boring, but makes very little sense.Luckily for me, I loved this sub genre, looking forward to all the wannabe crime dramas with style us Brits churned out.a great companion piece with High heels and Low Lifes, basically a carbon copy of this movie..
BEAUTIFUL CREATURES blatantly tries to fit in among dozens of British underworld action flicks starring the likes of; e.g., Bob Hoskins, Ewan McGregor, Ray Winstone, Clive Owns, etc., only this time with females in the lead roles.
Beautiful Creatures is one of those British crime dramas.
Anyway, Beautiful Creatures tells the story of Petula (Rachel Weisz) and Dorothy (Susan Lynch), two women brought together by fate who try to navigate their way through murder, lies, betrayal and happenstance.
The story starts with Dorothy getting her apartment trashed by her abusive boyfriend.
Dorothy follows to find Petula getting beaten by her boyfriend.
That brings in a detective inspector who wants a cut of the action and the return of Dorothy's abusive boyfriend, leading to one of those everybody-rushes-to-the-same-place-and-almost-everybody-ends-up-dead sort of endings.
Except for a strange, 5 minute stretch when it morphs into a stalker movie, Beautiful Creatures is a fine movie that sets itself above other British crime dramas in two ways.
This film involves people coming up with desperate plans by the seat of their pants that go wrong because they weren't that well thought out to begin with.
One of the other notable things about Beautiful Creatures is that it is probably the film where Rachel Weisz is the most attractive and sexy she's ever been and ever will be in a movie.
Though it's not as good a film, Beautiful Creatures could also be ranked alongside The Silence of the Lambs as one of the best, little-f feminist crime dramas that doesn't fall into the big-F Feminist trap of letting its take on sexual and gender politics overpower the story and turn it into "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" propaganda..
You'll have to settle for her butt in Enemy at the Gates.This movie wasn't sure if it wanted to be a comedy or a drama.
In the end, it's just not one of Rachel's best movies.
And it partially succeeds.Dorothy is Susan Lynch, who comes to the aid of Petula (Rachel Weisz).
Weisz is all gussied up like a blond tart but she looks striking, with her black eyebrows, dark gypsy eyes, and flattish nose in that wan environment.Nobody acts quite the way you'd expect them to, and if they try, the trick often fails.
It's rather like that, all the way through, so I can understand TV Guide's not quite knowing how to handle the movie.
You know, "Beautiful Creatures" is one of those ironical thrillers that makes you enjoy the criminal, since they are portrayed as the good guys in the story.