Are you suffering from post-Twlight depression? Well, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is here for you! This movie has vampires! Werewolves! Demons! Shadowhunters! Warlocks! And a teenage girl that finds out she's a shadowhunter and now has to solve a mystery in order to save her mommy.
Surprisingly, the film isn't as bad as I thought it would be, but it does have problems. If you're not a fan of the books or a savvy movie goer, this story may lose you after the first five minutes. It takes off in an incoherent way, but luckily, we have a protagonist that's just as clueless as we are, and after twenty minutes, it should make enough sense-ish.
Though the film is clearly targeted to teen girls, it's heavy in action. It was surprising to me until I found out that Harald Zwart, the film's director, was behind the remake of The Karate Kid.
Despite solid performances from the cast overall, the action wears the story down because of underdeveloped characters and relationships. Why should we care about the threat of death when the film barely shows a character with a storyline that lives?
While its horror sequences and sarcastic sense of humor is effective, it suggests that we shouldn't take this movie that seriously"”and hey, that's okay! But when certain dramatic revelations arise, it suggests we must take those aspects of the story very seriously, and while the subject is serious in nature, its tone of melodrama brought me unintentional humor rather than total intentional shock.
This movie has the ingredients to be successful with Twilight fans, but whether it will have Twilight success remains to be seen. There are several books in this series, and Hollywood is hoping for many sequels to come, but even our heroes in this story feel icky about their future.
