Beckett (Sophie Curtis) has this same expression for most of “Innnocence”. Unfortunately it’s not because she is under any sort of spell.
A fresh take on an old formula is typically a good thing. And that’s what I thought I was getting with Innocence, a teenage horror drama based on the book of the same name. The film jolts us right into tragedy as Beckett (Sophie Curtis) and her father Miles (Linus Roache) watch as Beckett’s mother is swept away by the ocean’s undercurrent while surfing. It seems like Innocence is off to a splendidly horrific start as this must be the horror Beckett has to deal with throughout the rest of the film. Nope.
In order to cope with their loss, Beckett and her father move to Manhattan where Beckett is enrolled in a preparatory school filled with every high school cliché you can imagine (a popular and pretty group of mean girls, a somewhat goth-y outcast to bond with, etc.). Beckett befriends Jen, the goth girl (Sarah Sutherland). One of the mean girls leaps from a campus window to her demise. Am I supposed to think death is somehow following Beckett? I don’t know, but she does some research and discovers there have been other suicides at this same school over the years.
Meanwhile, school nurse Pamela (Kelly Reilly) takes a particular interest in Beckett, and an even stronger interest in her father, basically shacking up with them as soon as they arrive. I have to say Reilly is one of the better parts of this movie, just as she was recently in Calvary and a couple of years ago in Flight. Reilly has a seductive nature that lends itself to her role here as a member of a coven of Desperate Housewives-looking women who run the school. So I certainly don’t blame Miles for accepting Pam’s advances so quickly. But wait a second. Didn’t he just lose his wife? Shouldn’t he and Beckett still be grieving a little more than they are, which is hardly at all? Sure, Beckett starts having nightmares and visions, but those don’t really have anything to do with her recently-deceased mother.
Kelly Reilly as Pam, the seductive witch, is the best part of “Innocence”.
OK. So, after the one girl kills herself, Beckett starts seeing the ghosts of other girls who have committed suicide at the school. These ghosts lead her to dark alleys and other secret locations, where she soon discovers that Jen’s mom, Pam and others are part of this coven that runs the school. And the school has basically served as a farm system that supplies the coven with the virgin blood they need to maintain their power and beauty. This is all going to come back to Beckett’s mother’s death, right? I mean, she must have been involved with this coven in some way. Or maybe she was a student at the same school when she was a teenager and witnessed something this coven didn’t want exposed. Nope.
Anyway, Beckett comes to realize that these suicides haven’t been voluntary at all. Instead, these girls have been under some sort of spell cast by the coven that causes them to unwillfully commit suicide so the coven can drink their blood without committing obvious murders. And it looks like Beckett is next in line, which is why Pam has been spending so much time with Beckett’s dad. (Maybe that explains Curtis’ trance-like acting, but probably not.) To thwart the coven’s plan, Beckett calls her boyfriend Tobey (Graham Phillips), whose mom (Stephanie March) is one of the more beautiful members of the coven, and does some seducing of her own. By the time the coven kidnaps Beckett and Pam ritualistically drinks her blood, it is no longer virgin blood and is of no use to the coven.
Beckett is invited by Pam to join the coven.
Naturally, Pam instead offers to let Beckett drink her blood so Beckett can become part of the coven. Beckett spits the blood onto Pam’s face, which makes for a nice visual. Then Tobey comes to the rescue and, well, the movie ends in such a way that even a novice soothsayer could have seen it coming. Still, none of it ever relates to the loss of Beckett’s mother. So I guess that was simply an unnecessarily tragic impetus for Beckett to move to Manhattan and enroll in this witchy school. Meaning that what started out with the promise of being a new twist on an old idea ends up more like an extended episode of Charmed (or maybe even Charmed: The Next Generation). Actually, that comparison is doing Charmed a huge disservice. I haven’t seen the Twilight movies, but I imagine Innocence is (at least trying to be) to witches what Twilight is to vampires. Hence this sparkling review.