Twilight (2008)
Directed By: Catherine Hardwicke
11 Oct 2021
I reluctantly agreed to watch Twilight at the request of my wife. It was as bad as I had feared. It’s a teen romance novel with a single interesting twist (what if the love interest was a vampire?) shoved into an agonizingly long movie. The only character I found relatable at all was Bella’s father. The acting was whiplash inducing, sometimes emotionless and the next second the character would seem to be at least attempting to convey the opposite. The time scale is all over the place. Towards the climax, Bella drives from Washington to Arizona in the same amount of time it takes for the rest of the crew to run across through the forest. Then Edward seemingly runs from Washington to Arizona in less time than it took them to drive there, just in time to save the day.
The world building is non-sensical, with absolutely zero thought given to second or greater order effects. The question, what if the love interest was a vampire? is asked but not “What would the world look like if immortal vampires had existed since ancient times?” Why don’t vampires rule the world? The humans would clearly have no chance at fighting off the vampires. I for one had a difficult time suspending my disbelief. Maybe the book was required reading for the movie and all these questions are answered there. They could also answer it later in the saga (which I won’t be watching) as they probably do with Jacob who clearly was just there to be established for later in the series.
I will say that the one aspect of the movie I did enjoy was the sound track. It had a very distinct and catchy melody that was used in different ways throughout the movie and it stuck to the theme.