Based on the books by Cassandra Clare, “The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones” is the first in an installment of movies. The movie follows 15-year old Clary Fray played by Lilly Collins, a girl who lives an ordinary life with her mother (Lena Headey) and bestfriend Simon (Robert Sheehan) in New York City. She one day starts drawing and seeing this strange symbol and can’t explain what it means or how she feels this connection to it. She soon discovers she comes from a long line of Shadowhunters.
These Shadowhunters exist in order to rid the world of demons and other mythical creatures. Clary’s mother is one of the most powerful Shadowhunters that has ever existed, and to keep her daughter away from the dangers that the shadow world possesses she erases her memory and doesn’t tell her the truth about who she really is. Clary comes home to her mother missing one day and a dog –like demon in her kitchen, she is saved by fellow shadow hunter Jace (Jamie Campbell Bower) and he tells her the truth about who she is and what she is meant to do. Clary discovers more and more about the world these Shadowhunters live in and why her mother chose to keep the truth from her.
The movie is like any other teenage supernatural fantasy. It follows a lot of the same plots and has incorporated the infamous love-triangle. There were many enjoyable parts but overall the movie was quite bland. The potential was there as they had a good cast, but it just felt like it was lacking something. The writers threw in a lot of unimportant information and history about the Shadowhunters, and many of it was lost in translation. Many questions were unanswered it seems. The cute back-and-forth banter between Jace and Simon as they both vie for Clary’s affection was quite cute, as were the little bits of dry humor thrown in there every once in a while.
A second movie based upon the next book in the series “The Mortal Instruments: City of Ashes” is set for a 2014 release. The twist at the end may end up bringing a lot of the first-time watchers back for the second one.
