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David Mumpower: Unlike several of you, I had seen several ads for it. Based on their quality, I had presumed this opening would be on a par with flops such as Planet 51 and Alpha and Omega. There was absolutely nothing compelling in these commercials. I am absolutely stunned by the opening weekend performance of this movie. Who saw this and thought, "Now there is a movie I have to take my kids to see!"? It boggles my mind.

Kim Hollis: Beautiful Creatures, Warner Bros' attempt at starting a Twilight-esque franchise of their own, made only $7.6 million from Friday-to-Sunday and $10.1 million since debuting on Thursday. What went wrong here?

Brett Ballard-Beach: This is the rare film that I couldn't even bring myself to read a synopsis of in the months prior to its release. Now that I have, I am still befuddled. Richard LaGravanese has a lot of goodwill built up over 20 years as far as I am concerned. The fact that he wanted to adapt and direct this stands for something in my book, but not enough I fear to make me want to slog through it. It sounds like a Twilight ripoff with Academy Award caliber supporting players hamming it up. As for what went wrong? It looked like a Twilight ripoff and it had the misfortune to go up against a stronger than expected Safe Haven and a still-strong Warm Bodies.

Bruce Hall: Aside from teens perhaps being brighter than everyone thinks, it's hard to say. You can count me a little out of the loop here - a few weeks ago I had to Google up on the Caster Chronicles because I kept wondering why anyone would remake that Rachel Weisz film. It looks like four books in under four years, right in the midst of the Twilight craze. I'm not accusing anyone of anything but there are enough superficial similarities to suggest someone might be jumping on the latest entertainment fad. There's nothing wrong with that, unless you're a cynical teenager who's still smarting from the end of the Twilight "Saga". Many reviews have Beautiful Creatures pegged as a disappointing and derivative experience (at best). When I was a teen I was willing to accept a great deal of media condescension, but if I perceived something to be a blatantly inferior rip off of something I was emotionally invested in, I'd have avoided it at all costs. And it wouldn't take much convincing to get my friends to do the same. This is a damning result, and while it's not quite Narnia or Golden Compass-sized, it might be enough to kill the franchise in the cradle.

Shalimar Sahota: It just looks like a blatant cash in on supernatural hokum involving lovey teenagers and I imagine some teenagers spotted this themselves? The little advertising I did see for this just looked really bad. I guess this doesn't bode well for The Mortal Instruments over the summer.

Matthew Huntley: When I first saw the trailer for Beautiful Creatures, it didn't make much of an impact on me (and not just because I'm not the target demographic), nor to other members of the audience as far as I could tell. It made the movie seem disorderly, silly and just plain inconsequential. If my reactions happened to be shared among most moviegoers, it makes sense the film would crash and burn. It now seems relegated to oblivion, never to be heard or spoken of again. That's probably not what Warner Bros.' wanted for their $50-million movie.

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