Summary Beautiful Creatures (2013)
Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich) longs to escape his small southern town. He meets a mysterious new girl, Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert). Together, they uncover dark secrets about their respective families, their history, and their town.
Teenager Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich) is obsessed with his urge to finish high school and go on to college in order to leave the small town of Gatlin, South Carolina behind, until a mysterious girl begins to inhabit his dreams. When he meets Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert), a newcomer who has just enrolled in his school, Ethan knows she is the girl in his dreams. Lena is rejected by the rest of her classmates for being the niece of Macon Ravenwood (Jeremy Irons), whom the town's superstitious residents consider to be a devil-worshiper. But Ethan gives her a ride anyway and they fall in love. Lena reveals to her new boyfriend that she is a witch, and that on her sixteenth birthday she will be claimed by either the forces of light or of darkness. She will remain in the light, but only if she does not remain in love with Ethan. To make matters worse, her evil mother, Sarafine (Dame Emma Thompson), is casting spells to push Lena to the dark side. Ethan joins her in a search to find a magic spell to save their doomed love. Will the lovers succeed?
This epic romantic fantasy tells the story of Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich), a young man who falls for Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert), a new girl in his small town, only to discover she comes from a mysterious family, all of whom possess supernatural powers. Together, they team up to break a curse.
Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert) has just moved to the small, southern town of Gatlin, where the only person who seems to understand her - or dream of bigger places or ideas - is a cute guy named Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich), who recognizes her instantly from the cryptic dreams he's been having every night. Lena is an orphan, and she's come to stay with her mysterious uncle, Macon Ravenwood (Jeremy Irons), the patriarch of her powerful family. Powerful, because The Ravenwood clan are Casters, born with powers that ordinary mortals don't have, like the ability to move objects, control the elements, and even step out of normal space and time to communicate only with each other. But just as Lena feels ready to open up to Ethan, she discovers that their love is in imminent danger, because when female Casters turn sixteen, their destiny as either good or evil is revealed. Unwilling to let her nature be dictated by forces outside of her control, Lena and Ethan set out together to uncover the strange, secret lore of their families' intertwined histories dating back to the Civil War, and figure out how to grant Lena the power to choose her own destiny.
Ethan Wate was born, raised and still lives in what he considers the backwater of Gatlin, South Carolina, where residents, as his mother, writer Lila Evans, used to say are too stupid to leave or too stuck to move. It is located next to an old Civil War battle site, Honey Hill, an annual reenactment of the battle which is organized by the Civil War Society at Christmas. He does expect to leave when he goes to college, those to which he is applying being as far away from Gatlin as possible. He is still mourning Lila's recent death in a car accident in the spring, Amma, a family friend and the town public librarian, acting as his caregiver in a promise to Lila. Many of who are considered the leading families of the town hide behind the church for their narrow-minded views, those families including that of Emily Asher, who Ethan dated up until the end of the last school year. They started growing apart as one of the things Ethan has started doing is reading books banned by the local church. In what is the start of his junior year, he has a new classmate in Lena Duchannes, shunned by Emily and her like in Lena being the niece of reclusive Macon Ravenwood, who the Christian fundamentalists in town believe is a Satanist. That feeling is despite the Ravenwoods having founded Gatlin. Ethan, however, is drawn to Lena, he believing she the girl in the recurring dream he has been having, they which started even before he and Lena met. Some close to Ethan know the secrets of the Ravenwoods, and that Ethan and Lena's meeting was destined as shown by his dreams. As Ethan begins to learn those secrets first hand in trying to get to know and falling for Lena, he may be tied to Lena's fate, for good or bad, the big day being Lena's sixteenth birthday on December 21st. Regardless of that fate, what happens with Lena and by association Ethan, which includes not only his ability to get out of Gatlin as he wants but his life or death, is affected by the arrival of two Ravenwoods that were explicitly not invited, namely Ridley Duchannes, one of Lena's cousins who recently went through the same thing on her sixteenth birthday, and Macon's sister Sarafine.
Unlike his hillbilly classmates in South Carolinian backwater Gatlin, where reenacting the undecided Secession War battle of Honey Hill is the annual highlight, bright Ethan Wate has an open mind and aspires becoming an author like his mother Lila Evans. He soon befriends fellow cultivate nerd Lena Duchannes, who lives in the grand mansion. When she take shim there to meet her guardian Macon Ravenwood, despised by the Bible Belt community, Ethan gets acquainted with her bewildering sorcery dynasty heritage, but isn't daunted, even as more witch kin -Lena's cousin Ridely and Macon's sister Sarafine- arrive, bound to stir more trouble for everyone. Macon teams up with Ethan's medium nurse Amma, instrumental into introducing Lena to her destiny reaching age sixteen, which may turn white or black magic beyond her control, except if Ethan's love primes.
