The massive plus this gothic teen romance has over Twilight is that it's frequently funny - intentionally.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 1, 2017

It's a Southern-fried supernatural teen romance that's all empty calories and rich taste-just the thing for a Valentine's Day release.

| May 10, 2016

Beautiful Creatures is like the Twilight movies but with a chaperone making sure the boys dance a foot apart from the girls.

| Jan 3, 2014

The problem is tone. LaGravenese lets the English have their heads, while the young Americans moon and kiss and frown like they mean it.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 22, 2013

[Alice Englert] really is a terrific new star presence.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 22, 2013

If we must have supernatural high-school romances, can they all be as relatively painless as Beautiful Creatures?

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 18, 2013

The special effects are rarely special. Bad movie practice looms large as characters have private conversations out in the open or worse again, narrate the action.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 15, 2013

Beautiful Creatures has enough exposition for two or three ordinary movies because without constant explanations it would be impossible to understand.

| Feb 15, 2013

The movie is claimed ... by narrative incoherence, Tim Burton-envy and the usual demons of digital effects.

| Feb 14, 2013

This surprisingly beguiling attempt to blend fantasy, coming-of-age drama, melodrama, camp and social critique isn't always successful - but it's nearly always entertaining.

| Feb 14, 2013

A dash -- only a dash -- of Tim Burton ghoulishness might have helped.

| Original Score: C+ | Feb 14, 2013

A silly, disjointed and incomplete narrative makes it nearly impossible to appreciate what could have been an intriguing new supernatural franchise.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 14, 2013

This fantasy about witches and warlocks walking among us was clearly produced for the Twilight crowd, but a witty script and the enjoyably hammy performances from Emma Thompson and Jeremy Irons broaden its appeal.

| Feb 14, 2013

For all its magical nonsense and overstuffed lore, Beautiful Creatures is also a simple story about kids who just want to be normal teenagers in love.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 14, 2013

Just when you thought you were done with the perennial teenage supernatural romance, it's back!

| Original Score: 6.2/10 | Feb 14, 2013

There's just enough here to make the inevitable sequels a not-entirely-unwelcome prospect.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 14, 2013

Beautiful Creatures rests entirely upon the shoulders of leads. And in that sense, it completely works.

| Original Score: B | Feb 14, 2013

Sumptuous-looking, crisply directed, wonderfully cast and far wittier than the drippy, earnest Twilight Saga. A captivating tale with a tongue-in-cheek sense of play.

| Feb 14, 2013

As supernatural types, Oscar winners Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson overact so strenuously and with such outrageously awful Southern accents that you fear the damage this crock may do to their reputations.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 14, 2013

Within the needlessly complicated script and CGI special-effects overkill, there are some promising moments.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 14, 2013