Beautiful Creatures

At first I thought this might be that early movie by Peter Jackson, about the two girls who murder the mother of one of them in New Zealand (and one of them goes on to become the best-selling novelist Anne Perry), but that was Heavenly Creatures. That one starred Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey. This one stars Rachel Weisz and Susan Lynch. They are two strangers who each have an abusive boyfriend. They meet accidentally while Kate’s boyfriend is killing her, and Susan accidentally kills him. Thrown together, they have to figure out what to do while being in way over their heads. Though some awful things happen, it plays for very dark laughs, and I laughed quite a bit. All four of the men involved, including a bent cop, are despicable, but they all end up dead (no surprise, I think), so that’s okay. I liked this a lot more than the critics did. Hard to say how others might react. A lot would depend on how funny you think it might be to have a severed finger (chewed off by Susan’s dog, Pluto, who is a hell of an actor) pop up in unexpected places. Does that gross you out? Then don’t see this.