Delayed Reaction: Beautiful Creatures

The Pitch: It's like Twilight, but in the deep south, and with witches instead of vampires, which it totally different.

What's going on with this cast? It's got young Han Solo, Aldren Ehrenreich. His best friend is Thomas Mann, who I loved in Me & Earl & The Dying Girl. There's Emmy Rossum who I really expected to have more of a film career by now, because she's awesome. This movie even allows me to check off another movie from my filmography stalking of Zoey Deutch. And I haven't even gotten to Viola Davis and Emma Thompson. Jeremy Irons too. And character actress Margo Martindale. Really, Alice Englert is the only person who I didn't already have a fondness for going in. This is a much better cast than the movie deserves.

And the cast carries it. I don't care much about the story. In fact, I checked out pretty quickly when it came to all the talk of witches casters and curses. Ehrenreich and Englert are charming together. Davis and Irons give a lot of gravity to pretty rote exposition. Emma Thompson is having a lot of fun as the villain. Rossum knows that her character is the scene-stealer and commands the screen like it. If this cast was assembled for something better than a watered down Twilight with a heavy southern twang, I would have loved this.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend