Reviewed by Alicia Glass

Review Rating: 6

Based on the bestselling novel by Stephanie Meyer, Twilight is the opening story of teenager Bella Swan moving to a new area where she meets and subsequently falls in love with a vampire.

I just knew I shouldn’t have watched this movie. And as usual, I was right. I’m a huge fan of Horror and Sci-Fi and Fantasy, but this movie, and think hard about this, is a vampire movie directed at/to young teenagers. And it’s just as bad, if not worse, than Underworld, which I didn’t like either. Vampires are cool enough to get their own movies, we don’t need to throw in Werewolves (who should get their own movies as well, in my opinion). And really folks, tell your children for their own sake, that there’s nothing romantic about a leech and a murderer and a monster. You seriously mean to tell me that a vampire that’s been dead for at least fifty years has the strength of will to, not to be indelicate here but still, not take the blood of a virgin? Come on. Bram Stoker, or hell even Anne Rice, had it much more accurate. And that’s another thing, this family of vampires who were all turned when they were teenagers. That’s one of those unspoken laws among traditional vampire stories, humans aren’t turned until they reach a certain age, with good reason.

Yes yes, Kristen Stewart who plays Bella is all kinds of wan and melancholy and evokes all sorts of sighs of passion. Is that really what we want our fifteen-year-olds to be watching? And how about Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward. Don’t get me wrong, all kinds of handsome and dark and mysterious vampire, ooh. I still think I’d rather have a fully grown man vampire, give us Antonio Banderas as Armand in Interview With the Vampire or Gary Oldman as Prince Vlad in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The rest of the cast is more or less fine, their roles are a lot less defined since so much attention is placed on *gasp* Edward and Bella’s true love.

And I thought blatant consumer advertising was frowned upon in the movie industry these days. The full first half of the movie is a Google.com commercial, oh I kid you not. It’s not like Google needs to live by word of mouth these days, so unless it was in there to try and indicate the Now-time apart from the Back-Then-Time in the movie storyline, could we please not.

Of course it was incredibly popular, so are the book series, and the movie producers are already working on the sequel. That doesn’t make it good, or even original.