Fallen : Les Damnés

The teenager Lucinda "Luce" Price (Addison Timlin) is brought to the Sword and Cross reformatory by her parents to comply with a court order since she was accused for the death of her boyfriend Trevor (Leo Suter) in a fire. However Luce blames shadows for the incident and is considered lunatic. On the arrival, Luce is instructed about the rules and regulations in the school and has contact with the rebel student Cameron "Cam" Briel (Harrison Gilbertson) and then with Arriane Alter (Daisy Head). She visits the library and is welcomed by Miss Sophia (Joely Richardson) that gives books for her and is confronted by the weird Molly Zane (Sianoa Smit-McPhee). Then she befriends the student Pennyweather "Penn" (Lola Kirke) and she feels attracted by Daniel Grigori (Jeremy Irvine), who saves her from a falling statue of an angel. On the next days she is courted by Cam and Daniel and has flashbacks from Trevor's accident and an apparently her past life. She also has a class with Miss Sophia about the war of the angels and the falling angels. When Penny and Luce research with their friend Todd Hammond (Chris Ashby) about Daniel, they find a XIX century picture of Luce and Daniel. However there is a fire in the library caused by shadows and Todd dies. What is the secret of the Sword and Cross?

"Fallen" is another silly romance indicated for young teenagers and fans of "Twilight" only. Adults will probably find it desipient since after so many centuries angels should be more mature. The screenplay is not good and there is no explanation why the fallen angels live at Sword and Cross. The concept of angels with lightened wings is original and the soundtrack is very beautiful. And that is all. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Fallen - O Filme" ("Fallen - The Movie")

Note: On 18 March 2023, I saw this film again on Blu-Ray.

Is there an algorithm that writes these kind of movies and books? Just like all the identical Hallmark Christmas movies, this movie could just have been called City of Bones/The Mortal Instruments/Shadow Hunters, Twilight, Divergent, True Blood. Take your pick.

This was so bad I forced my self to give it 2. Bad acting, bad story,characters are flat and uninteresting, idea of fallen angels and the reason for being on the earth wouldn't buy even preschool kids... It was like this film was made by bunch of teen twilight fans, and made very badly. Waste of time.

Fallen is a movie based on a book by Lauren Kate. It should be the first movie in the series but since there were a lot of distribution problems, I doubt this will become a franchise. The book could have been better, but it was decent. Flawed, but decent. This is just kinda lame.

I like how it tried to keep the moody and Gothic atmosphere, but it all just felt amateurish and low budget, I couldn't take it very seriously. The first two thirds are a bit slow paced and then the last third feels so rushed, you don't really get to know anything. You just get a lot of exposition, things just happen but nothing interesting, so the climax just comes off as forced. The one plus of the movie is Lola Kirke as the geeky best friend Penn. She seems to be the only one who actually got into this and tried to make something good. She stole every scene she was in. She's the most memorable character of the movie and she's not even one of the leads. The lead actress is pretty much Kristen Stewart in Twilight. There's really not much difference. The rest of the characters, they are just there. Even that is hard to believe because you just don't notice them.

This was the opportunity to improve the story, but it just made the whole thing worse. I'm not even sure if fans will like this.

Book to movie adaptations usually aren't fantastic so I had low expectations for this movie. At the beginning it looked like I was going to end up pleased. The characters were enjoyable, Arriane was exciting and I was looking forward to seeing some more character development with her, as I was with Roland, and Cam, and Molly, and.... honestly every other character in the movie, with the exception of Luce. But it didn't come, even Cam got a maximum of 20 minutes of screen time, Roland was probably there for about 5 minutes and said a total of about 10 words and a few "wooo"'s. This movie honestly needed to be another 30 minutes at least, not to mention cutting out some of Luces brooding. I had low expectations already, but once I got to the end they were even lower. It had so much potential and unfortunately most of the movie was Luce and Daniel brooding which wouldn't have been a problem if there had've been an extra 30 minutes of jam packed action at the end involving all the other characters. This wasn't the case at all, and the ending totally ruined the entire movie. I still had hope for this movie at this point, and I was looking forward to seeing some actual conversations between a few of the characters, and it just ended. Obviously this is only the first book, but I have doubts about another movie being made, and I really don't think that was a satisfying ending. A real shame because I think there was so much potential, especially if the post processing had've been better. A lot of the time the words didn't match the scene on the screen. Super irritating and definitely made the movie feel unprofessional.

TLDR; Hardly any character interactions, supporting characters just stood there in the background of classrooms, total brood-fest of Luce and Daniel, at least 30 minutes too short, unprofessional post processing