IN writer/director Richard La Gravenese’s adaptation of Kami Garcia’s fantasy romance novel set in an isolated South Carolina town, Ethan (Alden Ehrenreich) reads real books.

Orphaned newcomer Lena (Alice Englert) enrolls in the class. It doesn’t take long for Ethan and Lena to get something going.

Which is okay by Lena’s uncle Ravenwood, who lives in an externally-dilapidated internally-uber-modern former plantation mansion on a branch road off the Interstate. Not okay by Ethan’s neighbour, Mrs Lincoln, vigorously lambasting them before the congregation for just about everything. Watch Mrs Lincoln. She’s not what she seems.

On December 21, while the town re-enacts a nearby Civil War battle, Lena will turn 16 and her familiars will decide whether she is a white or a black caster, with supernatural powers.

Understanding the reason for film’s title needs some powerful mental gymnastics. Lena’s sister Ridley (Emily Rossom) shows plenty of leg and cleavage and Ethan is a pretty boy. For me, the film’s most beautiful creature is Emma Thompson as Mrs Lincoln. Also the standout actress, as happens with any film in which she appears, she shares the film’s subtle comical undercurrents with Jeremy Irons as Ravenwood.

A pot-boiler perhaps but a cut above anything out of the twilight zone.

At Dendy, Hoyts and Limelight