Twilight (2008)

Review

Due to her mom wanting to go on some weird baseball thing with her stepdad, emo teen Bella Swan - was really hoping that would be short for Belladonna - has to move up to the rainy small town of Forks, Washington. That would be from the sunny climes of Phoenix. She is down to live with her natural father who is the local sheriff.

Considering Bella is an outsider back home she sure hits pay dirt in Washington. Her dad buys her a truck from one of the local Native Americans, the local school kids are hanging with her, and she catches the eye of Edward in the school cafeteria. Everything would be sweet for Bella except Edward and his family are vampires, though on the bright side they are vegetarian blood suckers who only dine on the local deer population. Some sort of a movie ensues, not quite sure what I watched to be honest.

I'm right out of the ballpark in terms of the demographic Twilight is aiming for, and if we had to be honest 90% of people are boycotting the old ballpark on this one, leaving the movie for the diehard "Twitards", as they have been named on the net. Possibly if you are sub teen chick or a late developing teen gal then the movie might appeal to you, everyone else is just going to be left thinking wtf! The movie is based off the less than developed pulp book by Stephenie Meyer and shows all the signs of having been thrown together by a Hollywood focus group of mentally challenged chimpanzees. I took one for the team over this steaming pile of offal so enjoy the freaking review as my brain has melted and is oozing out of my ears just thinking about Twilight.

Let's get the whole vampire thing out of the way first: don't expect predators or even Buffy style blood suckers here. As opposed to the gazillion pages written on vampires, Meyer decided hers could cavort around in daytime Washington cause it's constantly raining there and overcast, or some such bollock. Even worse for vamp purists, if Meyer's descendants of Dracula are exposed to direct sunlight then they sparkle rather than burst into flames. Yes I know, its enough to have you wanting to hunt out the nearest bus route so you can throw yourself under a double-decker rather than live in a world where this sort of half-arsed thinking exists. I blame the Mormons myself; first Donny and Marie, now Stephenie Meyer. Someone nuke Salt Lake City for Christ's sake - who knows what diabolic scheme they are thinking up next! Okay, we all good on the vampires? Just put off thinking about them and you'll feel better in the morning, trust me on that one friends and neighbours.

So what else can I tell you about the resident fang gang? Well, they are hundreds of years old and still attend high school - that brings a whole new meaning to retarded folks. Without putting too much emphasis on things, that would make Edward something of a paedophile as well really, given his interest in the less than prom queen like Bella. Guess vampires in Washington are really attracted by pasty faced emo wannabes. At least our vamps have superhuman speed and strength, cause Bella has to be exposed to the maximum danger after all. Anyone starting to think that writer Meyer is simply coming off a really disturbed childhood? And don't get me anywhere near the "daddy" thing, that's just too Taswegian, hence disturbing.

With the fangers covered - did I mention they all look like rejects from a Cure concert? - let's have a look a the actual film. Well without going into too much depth - if you scratch the surface here you'll be staring at blank film stock - director Catherine Hardwicke has turned in a freaking mess that should be shot and put out of its misery. Character development doesn't exist, tension doesn't exist, and there's simply no chemistry between the two leads. At least in Robert Pattinson's case he's playing a dead person and hence has an explanation for the stiff wooden performance he turns in. Don't ask me what Kristen Stewart's excuse is.

Hardwicke shambles along between what I assume are major scenes from the book without any thought of cinematic art form or making a half coherent movie for that matter. For the most part Hardwicke simply points and shoots without bothering to give her cast anything like direction besides screaming out "You're a dead person, play it dead, no I didn't mean the town folk, oh to hell with it, that's a wrap". It's when our Director of the inane gets to major scenes that things start falling apart, mainly because the audience will spend more time laughing their arses off than catching what passes for a plot in Twilight. Vampires playing baseball on moonlit stormy nights, a vampire tracker, anyone wanting to hang with Bella, Robert Pattinson actually finding work after this movie, your call on which is the more unbelievable development.

Now I hate going a whole review without having something positive to say about a movie, and bloody hell Twilight was pushing me all the way to find the good stuff to say rather than kicking the life out of it. So the locations are pretty impressive, nice forests and the like, pity the cinematography is an insult to all that's decent in the world really. Biggest thumbs up for Twilight however is that it manages to make Australia not look like the worse major release of the last decade.

Bugger I'm not up to review length yet! Any more of this and I'll need medics, we're talking reviewer down over here folks. So lets spend a few minutes with the major reason for Twilight's existence, ripping money off pre-teen chickadees the love deal between Bella and Edward. Seems Edward really wants to eat Bella, like sucking her blood you pervert, so he decides they shouldn't hang around together. Good idea, except Edward spends every available moment of the day explaining this to Bella. Frack, people in adjoining states were getting the idea Mr Hair product; either Bella isn't the full quid or Edward has all the memory retention of a deranged goldfish eyeing up kitchen knives. Bella, of course, is attracted to Edward cause he reminds her of her favourite Cure member, he broods like some teen angst dude forced to take his little sister to a session of Twilight, and he has the personality of a house brick that has been laying in an overgrown garden for a few years. Somehow I just wasn't believing what I was seeing, either that or Washington state is where the U.S. breeds its real plain-looking people that couldn't make the inbred championships down in Arkansas.

And in case you think I'm being nasty cause the climax of this toilet-visit of a film is set in a ballet studio, you really don't want to know what my wife thought of the movie.

Hey, I'm up to review length!

Twilight is quite simply the worst movie I have seen this century, or last century for that matter. There's no redeeming feature and I think I may have lost quite a few I.Q. points just by sitting through it. At least most bad movies don't take themselves this seriously, but Twilight delights in being an angst-ridden journey into the mind of a naive pre-teen girl who quite possibly only exists within the Mormon community. Stephenie Meyer wrenched open the gates to hell and Hollywood unleashed the riders of the apocalypse on an unsuspecting world. In case you are still wondering, no I didn't enjoy the movie.

While I would like to recommend this movie to the state of South Australia I believe even those people aren't stupid enough to like this sort of stuff, or put the banjo aside and get off their front porch to go and watch it. Pray you never have to endure the sheer terror that is Twilight! Actually, just watch a couple of hours of Cure videos and you pretty much have had a better time than watching this movie, and it involves less hair products on screen.