Well the first thing I should say about this movie was that my expectations for it were set really low. For one thing, it was sold as a teenage romance movie with a supernatural twist, which immediately brings up all kinds of groans and warning signs from me. This movie seemed like it was destined to ride the waves the gluttonous teenage, supernatural stories being force fed on the population. Thus the reason for my very low expectations of this movie. Maybe it was because my expectations were set so low, I don't really know, but I think that did play a part in my actually enjoying this movie, despite all the ammunition clearly stacked against it.
I will write about the one blaring bad thing about this movie before I start talking about what I liked about this film. The two main characters of this movie are miscast age wise and it does, initially, hurt the story line. These teenagers are supposed to be in the middle of their high school years and their age doesn't do them any favors in supporting this, at all. I don't care if they were this age in the book, the film makers should have just made them seniors in the movie and think it would have worked better, instead of being the blaring distraction their age turns out to be. I mean they just don't act or look like their age is supposed to be, if they had been seniors in high school, everything would have worked better. I just don't know how the movies creators didn't understand this?
What does work with this movie?
There's a lot of things that work with this movie to make it much better than the deluge of teenage, romantic, supernatural movies that have plagued the population since Hollywood found out they could milk this genre for all it's worth. The setting isn't your typical setting for a teenage movie. Having it set way down south in the American bayou is a thing of daring beauty, as the setting becomes not just another back drop for a movie, but becomes an actual character in the movie and not just a gimmick setting as these types of settings normally become. The setting goes into forming the culture where the movie is set, as well as playing a crucial role in shaping the main character. The Southern droll of his voice adds so much to him as a person and plays around with our own expectation of him. At first his Southern accent immediately presents him as some dumb hick, kid but as the movie progresses we get to see him as much more than own preconceived expectations. That is a good thing because he is more than your standard teenager with raging hormones. He loves books. And this isn't just some gimmick writer thing, where the writer gets to showcase his own intelligence with various dabbles into book commentaries that normally go no further than a scene or two. No, books helped to form his life. He talks about them, references them a lot, as any good book lover would, because they are an interracial part of who he is. They helped to form his life, his personality, and change him and make him the person he becomes. The movie uses them in that way throughout the movie.
This is one of the things I really liked about this movie. The two main characters acted like real people. Their conversations were believable as we see them really fall for each other, unlike the totally unbelievable love scenes Lucas presented in Attack of the Clones that were forced, unbelievable, and more awkward than anything else. I liked how people in this movie seemed to act like normal, real people would act when presented with logical situations or the truth. They didn't hide a blind eye when things were revealed to them, instead they reacted to situations in an honest way that didn't reek of dramatic pretensions that make no sense. That's one thing that really separates this movie from the other teen movies it will thrown together with: characters. Characters are the focal point of this movie with the supernatural taking a second place and it's all the better for it. The supernatural is there. It's some crazy supernatural powered scenes that are wild, energetic, and effects heavy but they never feel like set pieces set upon set pieces. The characters are always at the forefront of every scene, so the supernatural aspects of this movie always take a back seat to what is going on in the movie. Now-a-days it's really hard to find movies like this where characters and story are pushed to the front of the movie over the special effects and over the top set pieces that seem to dominate every movie.
This movie even had a faithful ending that wasn't filled with mushy, gushy, love infested teenage hormones but instead was extremely believable and honestly had me wanting more. I would look forward to a sequel if it was as fresh and good as this movie.
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