
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones
- sombre
- kinetic
- extreme
- inventive
- twisty
- epic-stakes
Sombre, breathless, extreme fantasy / action, surreal in texture. Ambivalent, epic, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.
How every film is hand-scored →In New York City, Clary Fray, a seemingly ordinary teenager, learns that she is descended from a line of Shadowhunters — half-angel warriors who protect humanity from evil forces. After her mother disappears, Clary joins forces with a group of Shadowhunters and enters Downworld, an alternate realm filled with demons, vampires, and a host of other creatures. Clary and her companions must find and protect an ancient cup that holds the key to her mother's future.
Our read · The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (2013) reads as a sombre, breathless, surreal fantasy · action · mystery entry — extreme in intensity, epic-stakes in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.




More info & search links
The shape of The Mortal Instruments
What watching it is actually like.
“You want glossy YA urban fantasy with demons, romance, and secret bloodlines.”
Skip it tonight — Skip if derivative franchise bait and muddy lore will frustrate you.
The reading.
Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.
Eight films that read most like this one.
Closeness in the twelve-axis space — how the film actually reads, not “people also liked.”
Discussion
What does your Movie DNA look like?
Rate a few films you've seen. We map your taste across the same twelve axes and find the films you'll actually want to watch tonight.
Calibrate yourself






