1330. Twilight (2008)

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke

Director: Catherine Hardwicke

Running Time: 122 mins

Twilight is an American film about a girl who moves from Arizona to a small town in Washington, where she meets a mysterious boy at school, who turns out to be a 108-year old vampire.

This film has a notorious reputation for being awful, but I tried hard to look at it from a fresh perspective. The thing with Twilight is, whilst it’s by no means a good film, it’s not a terrible movie either. The acting is sub-par, the dialogue is weird, and the plot makes no sense, but it’s a film with some effective directing that at least allows you to care about, and then get frustrated by, the ridiculous plot.

So, I didn’t hate Twilight. Shoot me, but I don’t think it’s that terrible. Why? Well, the best thing for me was the way it looked. It’s got this bizarre greyish-blue colour filter throughout the whole movie, but that actually worked for me. It was a striking and different choice made by the director and cinematographers, and it fit in with the slightly eerie atmosphere that the movie was trying to create.

Another positive, bizarrely, comes in the form of the way the story is told. Whilst the actual content of the plot is utter rubbish, this is a well-directed enough movie to at least make you care about what’s going on. Yes, it may have been ultimately frustrating to sit through the teen angsty hunky vampire romance stuff, but at least I was able to stay awake while watching the movie, which, in comparison to bore-fests like Fifty Shades Of Grey, is good to see.

But I don’t want to shower too much praise on this movie because it is still ultimately a disappointing watch. The major issues come from the plot, which is completely ridiculous. The romance is pretty unconvincing thanks to two poor performances from Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, actors who have proved they can do much better, whilst the direction that the story takes in favour of a more chick-flicky romance instead of a darker monster movie was disappointing.

I really felt that that was the biggest missed opportunity of this movie. Thanks to the directing, the atmosphere wasn’t too upbeat or popcorny, but I think that if the story, which comes from Stephenie Meyer’s book, favoured an eerier and darker look at the mythological creatures involved in the story, rather than turning it into a 13 year old emo’s version of The Notebook, it could have been far more interesting, which was very frustrating to see, and I can only hope that the sequels do something to rectify that.

Overall, I didn’t think too much of this film. I don’t think it deserves its infamously awful reputation, because there are far worse and more awkward movies about, but I do think that its poor story, coupled with some bad lead performances make it a very frustrating watch, so that’s why Twilight gets a 6.0 from me.