Ever since the Twilight series stormed the box office Hollywood has been on the lookout for more genre-tinged, romantic Young Adult fiction. And there’s been no short supply, particularly with the same theme of otherworldly love. This year alone brings Warm Bodies, The Host, Mortal Instruments and … Beautiful Creatures.
Based on the first book in the wildly popular lit franchise, Beautiful Creatures centers on Ethan (Alden Ehrenreich), a high school student who can’t wait to leave his tiny, backwards, Southern town. Ethan’s only friend at school is the goofy Link (Thomas Mann) until the mysterious Lena (Alice Englert) arrives. Lena is an outsider, bullied because of her strange family by classmate Emily (Zoey Deutch) and Link’s ultra Christian mother (Emma Thompson). Much to their chagrin, Ethan and Lena fall in love, and Ethan discovers Lena’s secret – she is a “caster” with incredible powers.
Given the popularity shambling corpses enjoy these days, it was only a matter of time before we got Warm Bodies , an honest-to-goodness zombie romantic comedy, in which a member of the living dead (“R”) falls for a still-breathing girl (“Julie,” get it?). And believe it or not, most critics actually…