Adults with their grey cells still intact, however, will find these shenanigans somewhat tedious and unconvincing, as there’s an element of overkill in the special effects department.
It appears that the basic rules of a successful young-adult fantasy have been completely ignored. These are a deeply-felt mythology, easily identifiable heroes and an immersive and magical world. Director Harold Zwart’s offering boasts none of these ingredients.
Unfortunately, this first adaptation of Clare’s The Mortal Instruments novels, City Of Bones, remains a never-ending parade of derivative genres and tortured psychic beings.
It’s an unwieldy mix that borrows freely from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Percy Jackson, Twilight and The Vampire Diaries without making a strong statement of its own.
Lily Collins, burdened with carrying the lead role of teenager Clary Fray on her slim shoulders, is not up to the mark. Her character is special. She lives in Brooklyn with her mother (Lena Headey) and discovers she’s the latest descendant in a line of Shadowhunters, half-human, half-angel creatures ordained to protect humanity from demons, vampires, slimy tentacled things and practically every other kind of monster except for zombies, which Clary learns in one of the film’s few traces of wit, do not exist.
The creatures live among us, invisible to ordinary mortals, and are kept in check by the Shadowhunters, striking tattooed teens who wear lots of black leather. There’s the angel-faced Jace (Bower), who is supposed to be a fearsome warrior but is so pale and skinny you keep wanting to feed him, the surly Alec (Zegers), who resents Clary’s presence, and the intrepid Isabelle (Jemima West), who is defined primarily by her mean magical whip.
When Clary’s mother goes missing, she begins an epic adventure of good versus evil in which ancient worlds collide. There are some creepy setpieces, such as a visit to a run-down hotel inhabited entirely by vampires, and an encounter with a kindly witch (CC Pounder) that takes a sudden, frightening turn. There’s very little new or exciting in City Of Bones to make you sit up and take notice.
A neat little touch, however, is the revelation that Johann Sebastian Bach was a Shadowhunter, and that he composed a piece of music that compels any demon that hears it to shed its human disguise.
The Mortal Instruments franchise is strictly for the initiated, who will no doubt love it. But everyone else will be flummoxed.
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