Twilight (2008)

VERDICT:
3/10 Emo Draculas

Sorry, Twihards, but I can’t believe that this is the reason people finally think vampires are cool. Blade would drop Edward’s ass like a bad habit.

Twilight is about a girl named Bella that moves to Forks, Washington – the cloudiest place on Earth – to live with her dad. She starts up at a new school, falls for the weirdo hunk in her class, then it turns out that he’s a vampire. But it’s cool, he doesn’t feed on humans, and she’s into the whole “my boyfriend’s a vampire” thing anyway. There are also these other evil vampires that are trying to kill Bella because her hair smells good, this makes Edward upset, things get complicated.

I can only assume that the novel is far superior to its movie adaptation because there is no way in hell this thing could have started such a pop culture phenomenon.

Alright, I’m just gonna go down the list of why this movie blew.

1) I’m guessing the selling point for why everyone on Earth but myself loves this story is because of the relationship between Edward and Bella. Yes, the whole vampire/human fever thing is a good idea, but it’s been done before and it’s been done better, go watch Let The Right One In. The big problem here is that everything about their illicit affair, if you can even call it that, feels totally manufactured. I can buy a human falling for a vampire, it’s the actors and the script I couldn’t believe. Which leads me to my next gripe…

2) What the hell is up with Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart? All they do is stare at each other for lengthy periods of time, blink a lot, stumble over their words like they learned English from a terribly nervous Bobby Boucher, go from super emotional to utterly vapid at the drop of a hat with each new sentence, and they absolutely refuse to talk like normal teenagers. The whole thing felt like a soap opera after a while, and I hate soap operas. It’s just way too serious for its own good and by the end I could really give a shit about whether these two work out. And can someone please explain to me why Robert-freaking-Pattinson is the new Jonathan Taylor Thomas? Am I missing something? Should I stop getting haircuts? Ugh, I don’t get it.

3) Newsflash, folks! These aren’t your grandfather’s vampires we’re talking about, these are Forks, Washington vampires. Turns out, all that jibber-jabber about how vampires burn to death when they walk into sunlight is straight horseshit. This is the new millennium, dammit, and our vampires don’t do any of that crap. That’s right, our vampires…GLITTER.
…
…
…WHAT?!?

4) There’s a vampire baseball scene. It’s fucking awful.

I could go on, but I think you get the point. I did my best to keep an open mind going into this, but one can only try so hard. The script is laughable, the acting sucks, it’s poorly directed, and the special effects are a total joke (ie: speeding up the footage so it looks like everyone’s running really fast – WOW!). Considering how many other vampire movies/TV shows there are right now that are most definitely a hell of a lot better than Twilight, the only reason I’m thinking you’d see this is if you’ve just finished reading the book. Can’t knock the source material because I haven’t given it a fair shot, but, man, this movie isn’t doing it any favors.

Also, absolutely heartbroken that Radiohead lent the best song on their latest album to this soundtrack. Couldn’t believe my ears during the end credits.

Absolutely. Heartbroken.