Twilight (2008)

Big bag of ass doesn't even begin to describe this attempt at 'cinema'. He hinted.

But seriously, I was expecting a pretty terrible film, and this delivered in swathes. The tone of the film is that typical angsty teen movie grey-blue that you find in everything from The Faculty to Disturbing Behaviour to Gossip. All classic teen movie examples, of course. Each more angsty and annoying then the last. The characterisation (if you can call it that) is so shallow and glossed over that throughout the film up to the end you have virtually no idea of any of the character's motivations or personalities, except that the female lead, Bessie or whatever, seems to think that having met someone for more than a couple of minutes means that she immediately has to start having various lovers quarrels with them, and that the male lead Eddie is dark.

Very dark.

He's, like, totally dark and dangerous, but she's OK with that. She's not afraid of his darkness, but he's afraid that the darkness in him, and that it'll make him kill her face in.

Seriously. He's dark. Maybe it's because he's a vampire. Maybe it's Maybelline. Fucked if I could tell, he was wearing too much make up.

The lengths to which they'll go to have him drop it into conversation every couple of minutes are astounding. And by astounding, I mean irritating. At one point I actually considered ripping out my own kidney so that I could think about something other than his fucking darkness. So, to recap, she's a bit needy and has the voice of a man, and he's a violent sociopath who thinks that he needs to start dating.

His family, who are all the same age as him, (even the pretend parents, I swear, barely looked 20) are all lovely of course. What's the reason? Oh, yes. They're friendly, nice, cuddly vampires. The kind that you'd hang out with if you were looking for The (not-quite Ian) Brady Bunch of killers. They only drink animal blood, play baseball and look after each other LIKE FAMILIES DO. Pussies.

The 2 leads have all the sexual chemistry of a wet towel covered in shit. Though that is basically all this film is, from beginning to end. Maybe it's a mistake of the writer or director, or maybe the story is the folly of 14-18 year-old girls who feel like they don't quite fit in. Maybe they should try aspirin instead. 40 to 60 should do the trick.

The writer's decision that the traditional vampire lore doesn't quite fit in with her teenage love-in has led her to make some interesting decisions in this regard. Sunlight? Pah, no problem whatsoever. They avoid direct sunlight, but only because it makes them shiny. Like ultra-sweat. Rather than perspiring, their skin turns all diamond-y. Well, isn't that sweet and romantic. I mean, they couldn't have a school romance if the vampires couldn't go to school, now, could they?

The film did manage to do one thing well, though, and that was win MTV movie awards, exceeding in such highly contested categories as 'Best Kiss' and 'Best Fight'. The kiss they refer to, I'm not sure. The only one I noticed had the 2 leads leaning uncomfortably for a prolonged period of time without their lips even meeting and swiftly turned into... I'm not even sure, I think I went for a dump at about that point. Best fight? Clearly the voters have never seen a film before. Lots of bad wire work? Check. Lots of hissing? Check. Broken glass? Check. I'm pretty sure they just cut and paste the scene from Mortal Kombat, it was about as skillfully choreographed. The fact that this film beat Slumdog Millionaire to the 'Best Movie' category says a lot, I feel. It says that if you watch and enjoy the MTV movie awards, you probably wouldn't notice if they replaced the entire show with footage of a monkey throwing shit into a bin.

Though Twilight is far from the worst film I've ever seen, it's about as enjoyable as watching your grandmother becoming a heroin addict and eating a cat.