Film Review: Twilight

"Don't believe the hype." - Alex Turner (arctic monkeys)

Gotta love the Hype Machine right. It is merciless, and only the truly strong and can survive in the aftermath of it's onslaught. Glorious victors (The Dark Knight, The Return of the King, and Titanic for example) stand apart from those things that are merely good. They are so good that despite all the expections we build up for it, we are still surprised by how good it is. Others just barely make the mark, like 300 (was great but lacking in all scenes that didn't involve Spartans cutting others' arms off), while others still get absolutely trampled (Spider-Man 3 I'm looking at you).

I mention this because Twilight is in my top 5 list of things I hear way too much about. Even before it came out, Robert Pattinson was already topping the Google-search charts, and the Paramore smash-hit Decode did even more for it (number one for how long on C4 Select? who can even count that high?). It was all I heard about for months, and now months after it was in cinemas and out again, I've finally seen it. Is it all worth it?

Yes. And no.

It's what I expected, with a little more. While watching it, I couldn't help but feel that it was skimming over certain details from the book it's based on, though seeing as I havn't read the book, i can't confirm whether that feeling is reality.

We are thrust into a small and quiet town along with Bella (Kristen Stewart), and things start happening quickly. She sits next to the pale Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) in class, quickly deduces that he is a vampire, he stops her from being meat in a car sandwich, and then... falls in love with him! Ooooo... Wait, what? How did that happen? They didn't even hang out together much, never got to know each other, never had all-night txtfests... I thought that's how teenagars fell in love? *shrugs*

Up to that point, I watched it like a guy, as in thinking "it's not really my kind movie, but it ain't too bad. I guess I can see why some people love it." But oh no, they had to include other killer vampires into the story who want to eat Bella. Great, now it's like a fricken Heroes episode with everyone getting hurt or killed because Sylar is obsessed with Claire. Yawn.

This is where the film falters. It just doesn't work as an action flick. Scenes with some vampire named James trying to capture Bella just don't have any intensity, and you never really feel that she's ever in any danger, even when he does capture her and is just about to bite her. You think "Edward's gonna be here in 3... 2... 1...." BAM! He randomly jumps in and tackles James; despite James' apparent skill in smelling people out he still gets surprised. And James?? I'm surprised they didn't name him something like Vlaxor or Pheonzaq.

However, when this film focuses on how cute the human girl/vampire boy couple is (all together now: awwww!), it does work, and even I was sold that they truly did love each other eventually. As a character piece, it does it's job of establishing the vampire Cullen family as well as the relationship Bella has with her father well, but in the end it all takes a backseat and it becomes nineties vampire flick, complete with "I'm gonna have to suck all the venom out of her!" Gasp? Umm, no.

There was a character in there named Jacob who is a werewolf I believe, who was underused; the film would have been much better served as a vampire vs werewolf film with a child from each world falling in love with Bella as the starting point, starting all sorts of fantasy teen drama. Overall though, it was still a decent movie, and while it doesn't completely conquer the Hype Machine it does manage to stay standing, setting up for what looks to be a much better sequel.

Final Rating: 3 (out of 5)