Let’s get real here people, up until the last year, not a single person beyond black make up and death metal fandom knew who or what the Twilight series was. I mean at least with Harry Potter I had some sort of preamble leading in to viewing the first four movies, but “Twilight” snuck out nowhere in the cinema scene and was destined to be a hit in spite of the slight obscurity. Just gazing down at a large picture of emo females with black lipstick, black digital cameras, and their own fan club I knew that this cliché, clunky mess of a story would bring in the big bucks. Because regardless of how passionate and antipathetic I or other critics feel, the movie will break the box office because author Stephanie Meyer knows her audience better than we know ourselves, don’t they?
Whether or not the interest in another preteen melodrama is a good thing but it’s another cash machine in the works takes all the beats from fare like “Buffy,” to Anne Rice and yes even “Dark Shadows” to guide us along the stepping stones of a film that’s barely even romantic. Hardwicke’s direction is strong, but the movie is so much based on teenage woes and angst rather than giving us the vampire action that non-fans were promised by the trailers. I was bored out of my brain and not even the appeal of Kristen Stewart could sway me the 90210 Degrassi could keep me from a movie that felt only partly developed with padding in the purpose of continuing the abundant two hour mark and nothing more.
Even at a hefty two hours, “Twilight” is a paradox with promised violence allowed to prevent an R and even contains horrible likes from paled Mascara vampires like “I felt the urge to protect you.” And I was resisting the urge to step out of the theater filled with squeaky voices of young girls fawning over the actors and impending murder mystery that, like the “Harry Potter” books try in vain to convince us that it’s not just little girl and a pure wet dream for anyone anxious to invest some time in this tedious demonstration on what’s wrong with vampire movies. There’s not a single bit of characterization here beyond what the human props were supposed to do on screen, and the rest is left to gloom and doom packs of vampires while our Romeo and Juliet figure out how to go a relationship in a world that wouldn’t expect. Yawn.
Everyone wants to be hip and self-aware like “Buffy” but poetic and smug like Anne Rice. The end product is this, a movie that bears a very, very passionate fan base that will rock this neo-vampire movement yet again pump money in to theatrical economy all thanks to Rice. And it’s also a metaphor for virginity and sex, yippee! Thank you Ms Rice turning our monsters of the night in to Daytime television dramas. I was honestly looking forward to slightly conceiving the popularity and fandom behind the books but the movie won’t help it come along as a pop culture fixture. Bland dialogue, boring characters and an attempted tension will come and go down in the lines of exposable film crap like “Blood & Chocolate.” Yeah now, I’ll be sure to pass on the sequel.