Twilight Review

Headache-inducing direction opens Twilight, barbaric and confusing morals close it. Throw some more characters in and extend a few plots and this is just Twin Peaks with vampires. Well, it isn’t, but still. It is nice to think that Forks is a small town, even though its population dwarfs a fair few rural communities in the United Kingdom. Either way, Twilight, the Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson-led disaster, is borderline accurate to the books by Stephanie Meyer. Those extreme, brooding close-ups on Pattinson are laughably great, and it is clear to see how much of a car crash the adaptation of such an awful book is going to be by the ten-minute mark.

Ensemble disasters are always a beautiful failure to see. Twilight is a fascinating, crushing blow of a feature and it all comes down to the quality of filmmaking at the time. Grey tones, anxiety-riddled characters that have since been adapted by people hoping to project their own fundamental flaws and qualities onto a poorly-written story, Twilight appeals to those that have nothing. Cullen (Pattinson) attempts to gaslight a mopey teen into believing he isn’t a vampire. It fails. Twilight dumbs down already simple dialogue from the Meyer piece and it becomes laughable in the process. Cullen comes across as an equally mopey teen, even though his character is 108, making his motives questionable and his presence admirably terrible for his vampirism-packed characteristics.

To their credit though these are young characters, individuals who had not quite been given the chance to articulate their acting capabilities. They keep them well hidden here. Catherine Hardwicke’s direction is fascinating. Ever-so-slightly tilted angles, drab colour schemes that try and bring out greens and blues that just never appear for the grey, rainy tones that surround this sleepy town. Isolated nobodies are killed off and have no connection to the story unfolding before those scenes. It makes for a complete whiplash of a narrative, darting back and forth between teenage drama and then back to vampiric killings that are more laughable than anything. Blurry action, literal, blurry footage, is what is offered up when Bella isn’t wandering around trying to figure out what vampires are. It is “a personal brand of heroin,” as Cullen calls Bella. What a piece of dialogue.

Either astigmatism has taken hold or the special effects are not noticeable, but the Twilight vampires do not sparkle as brightly as they could or should. But the film does not give much in the way of striking visuals. Sincerely one of the best features for a group watch, but that does showcase how awful the film, and the work it is based on, can be. Even then, it is great. Honestly, really good fun. What a film. A complete car crash of a feature where the surviving parts are generally acceptable in their quality. Lots of well-layered plot direction, two performances that manage to grow past the stumbling block of the opening, with Pattinson and Stewart riffing on one another with essential unity in the face of disastrous writing. Billy Burke gives a great supporting role too as begrudgingly emotive father figure Charlie Swan. Regardless of what Twilight does, and what it achieves, it never gets over the monumental failings of the book and the plot holes. Why Cullen trusts a stranger with his secret vampirism, why it devolves from there, it makes no sense. Suspend the disbelief and it becomes watchable, but certainly not readable.