The film adaptation of Fallen may have been a critical and commercial flop, but it is also gothic teenage heaven. It is based on the young adult book of the same name, the first in a six-book series that centers on a troubled teenage girl, Luce, as she is forced to choose between feelings for two fallen angels, Daniel and Cam. Fallen, like many other young adult series of its time,
was a direct product of the Twilight craze
, which saw an insatiable public thirst for romances between humans and various brooding non-humans after the release of Stephenie Meyer’s hugely popular vampire-werewolf series.
Fallen takes a somewhat biblical approach to the fad, packed to the brim with lore about Lucifer’s fall from heaven and reincarnation. Still, in true early-2000s love triangle fashion, most of Fallen‘s juiciest twists and turns concern “Team Daniel” and “Team Cam.” Enjoying an overdue moment in the limelight due to its recent addition to Netflix (and it’s current reign as the eighth most popular movie of the week), Fallen has viewers asking a critical question almost a decade after the film’s initial ill-fated release: who does Luce end up with?
Fallen
- Release Date
-
November 10, 2016
- Runtime
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91
- Director
-
Scott Hicks
- Writers
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Lauren Kate, Nichole Millard, Kathryn Price, Michael Ross
What Happens in ‘Fallen’?
Fallen begins with an animated preamble that explains how and why the fallen angels…fell. Those that had yet to pick a side between God and Lucifer were cast from heaven and punished. In the present day,
the plot follows Lucinda “Luce” Price
who is starting her first day at a reform school for troubled teens called Sword and Cross Academy. Luce has a mysterious past that involves a fire and the death of a boy named Trevor. During her first day, Luce meets various characters of note. She meets Cameron “Cam” Briel, a mysterious student who takes a romantic interest in her. She also meets Penn, a fellow outcast at the school who will become her best friend and ally. Miss Sophia is the religious studies teacher to them all. Most notably, Luce meets Daniel, a comically-handsome-for-high-school who she is instantly attracted to and feels that she has meet somewhere before.
Luce meets with the school therapist, where it is revealed that she often has hallucinations that she calls “shadows.” She is plagued by these shadows, yet refuses to be medicated. Later that day, Luce is nearly crushed by a falling gargoyle, but is saved at the last minute by Daniel (in what seems to be quite a blatant copycat scene from Twilight). Luce overhears Daniel and Miss Sophia having a conflab, and Daniel expresses concern that Cam may have been the one responsible for dropping the statue on Luce. Luce continues to try to talk to Daniel, insisting that he feels familiar to her, but he dismisses her. Cam continues to flirt with Luce despite the incident,
but Luce cannot fight her strong attraction to Daniel.
One day, after Luce’s persistence, Daniel states that he is “working on a graphic novel” about a couple who are cursed. The boy is immortal, and the girl is reincarnated every 17 years with no memory of her past lives. They are fated to fall in love in every life, and he is cursed to always have to experience the pain of seeing her die once they kiss.
For Luce’s birthday, Cam invites Luce to a club, where they kiss, but are violently interrupted by Daniel. Daniel says that he’s warned Cam to stay away from Luce and accuses him of still being loyal to Lucifer. Both Daniel and Cam, as well as
several others at Sword and Cross Academy
, are immortal fallen angels. At this point, through the use of facial recognition technology in old photos as well as the memories evoked provoked from her own “shadows,” Luce becomes certain that she is the girl in the reincarnation cycle that Daniel has described. There is a bit of a pressing issue because Luce is not baptized, so if she dies in this current life, she may not be reincarnated at all. Cam tells Luce that he loves her and can protect her from Lucifer. Now, Luce must choose between what seems like certain eternal death and true love.
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Who Does Luce Choose?
After a series of climactic events, including another fire, Luce, Daniel, and Cam stand atop a rooftop, faced with a choice. Luce can go with Cam and possibly live a long, normal life; or, Luce can choose undying love with Daniel but be fated to die as soon as they kiss. Luce declares that
she knows what she wants, and kisses Daniel.
This time is different. She does not die. However, they know this is not the end. Lucifer is coming for her. Daniel and Cam leave Luce with Miss Sophia to have an angel fight complete with incredible (please note the sarcasm here) CGI wings where they yell things at each other like “stay away from her!” while flying around in a storm.
Of course, there is a twist and Miss Sophia has been in cahoots with Lucifer all along. She kills Luce’s best friend, Penn, and attempts to kill Luce too. It turns out that Miss Sophia dropped the gargoyle, arguing that Daniel needs to choose a side for order to be restored. Miss Sophia is killed by the shadows. Daniel arrives in time to explain to Luce that as long as she remains unbaptized, she is vulnerable to dying forever at Lucifer’s hands. They declare their perpetual love and set off to find safety.
Related
no matter what genre of television is being viewed, there’s something uncontrollably ripe about a relationship that is ravaged by a third party.
So, in short, Luce chooses Daniel, of course!
Due to Fallen’s poor reception,
the planned sequels never came to fruition. Luckily, there is an entire body of literature that tells us what became of Luce and Daniel. If you are curious, at the end of the entire series, Luce and Daniel break the curse and live happily ever after as mortals.