“Fallen” is one of the worst young adult book adaptations on Rotten Tomatoes.

To all the young adult book lovers out there: stay strong, because it’s time to take a look back at a decade that brought great disappointment to bookworms. The 2010s saw numerous adaptations of young adult books into films as production companies began to jump on the same bandwagon that followed The Hunger Games‘Katniss Everdeen on a journey through the districts. The golden child of YA adaptations certainly paved the way by offering a unique story and a twist on how likeable the heroine is. In the early 2010s, the confusing world of Panem was taken from readers’ imaginations by Suzanne Collins and brought to the screen in even more breathtaking detail. But then came The mortal instruments. And Divergent. And The 5th wave. Sorry, but unfortunately the list goes on and goes up to 2016 Fallen.

It’s hard to believe there’s a movie that’s even worse The 5th wave and its nonsensical story concerns a stereotypical and painfully boring surprise love triangle. The downfall of young adult book-to-film adaptations unfortunately didn’t end with Cassie’s confusing attempt to save her brother (or humanity?) in the midst of a strangely evolved alien invasion. In fact, Scott Hicks’ film, based on Lauren Kate’s first book, is successful Fallen The series was a disaster. First published in 2009, Fallen marked the beginning of a collection of six books. Given the success of the novels, it’s even more frustrating that one of the worst book-to-film adaptations for young people only managed 7% Rotten tomatoes.

What is Lauren Kate’s Traps about?

Teenager Lucinda Price is blamed for the tragic death of a friend and sent to the monumental but dark boarding school Sword & Cross. Aside from finding comfort in her quirky new friend Penn, who takes Luce under her wing and shows her the dangers of the intimidating school, the teenager also finds herself strongly attracted to two other students who also seem to have their eye on her . Daniel and Cam are the guys in question. One of them pushes her away like the scum of the earth and the other desperately tries to wrap her around his finger.

Not only is Luce trapped in a twisted love triangle, but she is constantly haunted by dark visions and growing shadows. When she discovers that both Daniel and Cam are connected to their past and are actually fallen angels who have known them forever, Luce slowly comes closer to uncovering the daunting truths of a past she never knew. An epic battle between heaven and hell threatens to take her true love away from her and forces her to make a crucial decision.

The acting in Fallen is profoundly bad

The Fallen The film features memorable acting performances, but it’s safe to say that it’s not for the wonderful reasons that fans of the novel series have longed for. Frankly, the opposite is true, as the first few minutes of the film are enough to form the opinion that maybe, just maybe, something has gone tragically wrong in the acting department. Whether it was the simply bad script or a lack of connection to the actual characters in the book, the cast failed to capture the magic of Lauren Kate’s article and translate it to the screen.

Addison Timlin, who portrayed Lucinda Price, one of the main characters in FallenUnfortunately, he had difficulty developing a real personality. This led to the conclusion that even Kristen Stewart’s often strange portrayal of Bella in dusk was deeper than what Timlin put forward Fallen. The same goes for her two lovers in the film, Daniel Grigori, played by Jeremy Irvine, and Cam Briel, played by Harrison Gilbertson, who seemed to have the same forced acting skills.

If any, who does acting Fallen a dull, exhausting watchwhich merely takes viewers on an aggravating journey, forcing themselves to keep watching as the failure plays out. At best, Fallen is a solid, if sad, look back at the younger years of Harrison Gilbertson and Jeremy Irvine, just before the former appeared in the action thriller Upgrade and the latter got his role as Young Sam in Mama Mia! here we go again.

It’s certainly impressive that Harrison Gilbertson starred in one of the best films of 2023, the Oscar-winning biopic Oppenheimer and Jeremy Irvine will appear in the highly anticipated spin-off Outlander: Blood for My Blood and portraying the role of Claire’s father Henry Beauchamp, there’s no doubt that someone is involved in 2016 Fallen The film would rather remove any evidence from its growing filmography.

Fallen’s annoying plot changes and filler scenes

To fans of Lauren Kate’s novel series: The Fallen The film is a disappointment in many ways. As is common with questionable book-to-film adaptations, Another issue that’s hard to ignore is the plot changes. A key point that stands out is that Luce and Penn meet in an unforgettable way. Their interaction in the book is based on someone taunting Luce in the cafeteria and throwing a bowl of meatloaf over her head. When she’s in the bathroom to clean herself up, she meets the supportive Penn, who immediately shows empathy and helps her. It’s a pretty important moment that sets the tone for their entire friendship and Luce’s standing at school. Instead, the film leaves out important details, such as putting her in an awkward moment for everyone to see, including her future love interests, and fails to establish a solid foundation between Luce and Penn.

Generally, The film is full of filler scenes that have little to no relevance to the overall plot or make no sense. Whoever came up with the idea of ​​inserting scenes out of nowhere in the film in which the students take part in fencing lessons should reconsider the point of a school for dangerous teenagers. They have to give up their phones and literally anything that could somehow be turned into a weapon, but then they go ahead and take fencing classes? That’s interesting. In addition, key moments are stretched out in an exhausting manner, making the film seem unnecessarily long. Add in an annoying amount of flashing lights and painfully tedious dialogue and wrap it all up in poor editing, and you have a book-to-film adaptation that should have been better: this Fallen Film.

Ultimately, this is no surprise Fallen scored just 7% on Rotten Tomatoes. Although expectations for the film were high due to the success of Lauren Kate’s novel series, the Fallen Unfortunately, the film is nothing more than a terribly executed film dusk Rip-off that doesn’t hit the key points of a compelling young adult adaptation. Fallen is available to rent on Prime Video and AppleTV.