Seriously? — A Twilight Review

Okay, you’re probably wondering what a teeny-bopper movie review is doing on a gaming blog. It’s because the Twilight books are, for one, immensely popular among a number of demographics and, for two, Stephanie Meyer’s interpretation of modern day vampires is surprisingly compelling. If you haven’t read it yet but enjoy a good vampire story, I’d highly suggest picking up a copy of the book; just make sure to stay the hell away from the movie.

Throughout the entire first hour of the film, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. People were laughing so hard at the terrible acting, terrible effects and just terribleness that we were all brought to tears and it was well deserved.

The casting wasn’t necessarily bad; each actor more or less fit the description of the character from the book (except Jasper), but they just didn’t flesh out their respective characters at all. It was almost as though the casting director was more worried about an actor looking the part than actually being able to perform it.

The deadpan expressions and dry deliveries that every actor falls victim to is almost inspiring, and it doesn’t help that the makeup was so awful even I noticed it. The vampires all seemed to be wearing overnight beauty masks in some poor attempt to make them look pale, and everything was a washed out grey; which worked for the setting, but even the one moment in the story that needed to be bright and colorful (you know it if you’ve read it) looked like they added a spotlight and some glitter and called it a day.

"The power of Christ impales you"

Twilight failed in a number of ways, but it also succeeded in one key market that I don’t think the directors were targeting. As a mainstream piece of literary fiction, this movie is an unadulterated shit sandwich — but this film has an honest chance with cult fans who still can’t get over Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter. The massive number of unintended punch lines and lousy low-budget effects makes this movie worthy of cult status on opening night. If you ever watched Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and thought “Well, this wasn’t a complete waste of time” then you might enjoy Twilight.

In short, it’s so bad that it’s almost good. Oddly enough, I actually found that the straight to DVD Lost Boys: The Tribe actually had a stronger, more compelling narrative than Twilight, and that movie’s main draw was Corey Feldman.