The Lovely Bones | Legion - Prague, Czech Republic

Part of that is due to the director´s style, wholly inappropriate for the material. The obvious comparison would be to Heavenly Creatures, Jackson´s 1994 previous film involving young girls and murder, but there´s little resemblance; the fantasy world in that film was an internal extension of the young girls´ fantasies, here it´s an external force applied to a recently deceased girl. Instead of Lord of the Rings´ CGI armies contrasted against a New Zealand backdrop, we have human grief and drama played out over a CGI mishmash of fantastic landscapes and bright colors. It´s Alice in Purgatory.

“The Lovely Bones is a deplorable film with this message: If you’re a 14-year-old girl who has been brutally raped and murdered by a serial killer, you have a lot to look forward to. You can get together in heaven with the other teenage victims of the same killer, and gaze down in benevolence upon your family members as they mourn you and realize what a wonderful person you were. Sure, you miss your friends, but your fellow fatalities come dancing to greet you in a meadow of wildflowers, and how cool is that?”

Why is God so angry? The movie is less than clear on this point, only offering up (twice, no less) the narration that “one day, God got tired of all the bullshit.” Indeed. So he wipes out the human race, apparently, except the small group in a desolate diner. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, they just happen hold the key to mankind´s survival in the form of pregnant Charlie (Adrianne Palicki), who will give birth to some kind of vague Christ-like figure at any moment. 90 minutes in to the movie, they´re just starting to dive into bible instructions and three wise men, or prophets, or some such bullshit, which comes long past the point of anyone caring.