On paper, Beautiful Creatures may look like just another film adaptation of a bestselling YA series about a supernatural romance. Alden Ehrenreich stars as Ethan, a restless high schooler in podunk Gatlin, South Carolina, who yearns to break free from the oppressive small-mindedness and cultural atrophy of his hometown. Ethan is charming enough to seem like a standard-issue popular guy, but in private his tastes lean toward the cerebral (he is a voracious reader of banned books) and he dreams of the day he’ll leave Gatlin for good. Ethan’s thirst for something different is what attracts him to new girl Lena (Alice Englert), the quiet and witchy-looking descendent of one of Gatlin’s most notorious families. Lena is immediately targeted as a dangerous freak by the town’s many gossipy Bible-thumpers, and while Ethan rushes to defend her from their attacks, it turns out that Lena does present a very real threat: she comes from a family of Casters (read: Southern witches), and on her rapidly-approaching 16th birthday, she will be “claimed” for either good or evil – with potentially catastrophic consequences.
