Based upon the book of the same name, City of Bones is a supernatural movie in a world filled with demons, vampires and werewolves. It does not focus upon romance although it lightly touches upon those themes. The movie starts off on a promising note, seemingly straight into the important scenes, and a somewhat intense demon encounter. However, it starts to fall apart soon after, there is too much in the book which had to be left out due to time constraints and this makes the plot harder to understand. Furthermore, the book isn't well suited to be made into a movie and so when it was did, many scenes end up being bland. The big revelations towards the end of the climax did not have the impact it was supposed to have purely because it did not set it up well. The climax devolved into a big action sequence with meaningless fights. The biggest problem is that City of Bones feels like a cash-in, borrowing elements from other similar series, even when the source material is not.
