HORROR TEN SPOT: Top 10 Reasons Twilight Sucks

1. THE VAMPIRES

Why do the vampires in this have random super powers? He can read minds! She sees the future! This one has lethal senses (if you figure that one out please let me know). Apparently Meyer is a big fan of HEROES, but feels no fidelity at all to the mythology of the creature she chose to write about. Of course, the inexplicable fascination with baseball has already been covered. And I say inexplicable not because a vampire shouldn’t like baseball, but because it’s not set up by the story. It’s just dropped on us, which is doubly damaging when you’re departing from established or expected lore.

Which brings us to the glittering skin. The stupid f*cking glittering skin. It seems moronic on the surface, and is. Apparently this is an author with the imagination of a 10 year-old girl. I expect her office is covered in sparkles and Highlights stickers given the lack of maturity and depth in her work. But the real problem here is that, again without explanation or development, the vampires aversion to sunlight is changed from demonic to angelic. Vampires burst into flame in sunlight because they are evil creatures of darkness, sin personified, and they cannot stand the purifying light of day. Having them f*cking sparkle makes them angelic. But making that leap only works if you set it up, and if you don’t have your protagonist emo-ing all over the damn place about what a hell bound monster he is. Just pure stupid wrapped up in stupid with a creamy stupid filling.

2. THE CAST

I’ve touched on this earlier, but holy shite the lack of acting talent in this was amazing. Our two leads together manage to generate only one moment of real chemistry in the whole damn movie (the kiss). Outside of that it’s just watching a girl who’s a bit of a pill obsessing for no apparent reason over a boy who is some sort of bi-polar assh*le in clown makeup. Pattinson in particular gives the worst lead performance I think I’ve ever seen in a major studio release. And Stewart, while talented, spends way too much time acting with her lower lip in her teeth. I also couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t point out that Cam Gigandet makes the least intimidating vampire I’ve ever seen. Dammit! Even the bad guys are sanitized to ballessness in this f*cking film. I was psyched to see SharkBoy as Jacob, though.

3. THE PREDATOR SCENE

This one scene does an outstanding job of summing up all the weaknesses of TWILIGHT. We’ve got Edward at his most mood swingy, while literally swinging through trees. Which gives us a seemingly unending look at the awful visual F/X. His speech is full of all the bluster, ego and self-hatred that you’d expect from a goth teen, but the problem with that is he only looks like a teenager. He’s actually a very old man. Imagine your grandfather acting that immature and non-committal and then tell me how dreamy he seems. If I was a fan, this scene alone would have had me storming Summit Entertainment with torches and pitchforks.

4. THE DIRECTOR

I think Hardwicke has so far shown herself to have talent, although I’m not sold on her being the next big thing by any means. Whether or not you’ve already appointed her an auteur, her eye was a colossal stylistic mismatch for the story being told. Hers is a world of off angles, hand held cameras, and edge, dammit. Edge! TWILIGHT is a world where all the edges have been safely rounded off for the riskless consumption of impressionable, and none to picky, teen audiences. They just don’t work together.

5. THE F/X

Man, I thought the F/X in WOLVERINE sucked this summer. But whoo boy did TWILIGHT take the crown for shoddy, downright embarrassing CGI. Everything that involved vampire powers, save perhaps when Edward saves Bella from the van, looks like it was done on a Mac for a YouTube video. The glittering hardly stands out, the scampering up trees looks like a draft storyboard of a concept. and Edward’s manic jumping around continually draws attention to how poorly it’s done. Utter, epic fail.

6. THE DIALOGUE

Let’s take a tour through some of my favorite lines.

1 – You’re not in Phoenix anymore. Yeah, because when I think of dangerous terrain, Washington State is much scarier than Arizona.

2 – Hold on tight, spider monkey. What? Wait…what?

3 – You need to see what I look like in the sunlight. She does? Why? She’s a teenage girl and you sparkle like diamonds dude. How do you imagine that’s a bad thing to her. If sunlight gave you really bad acne then you might have something to worry about. But as it is, this is one more instance of non-sensical self-loathing. Hell, if I was dating a chick with skin like that I’d do nothing but look for opportunities to have sex outside.

4 – And so the lion fell in love with the lamb. Oh where to begin. First of all, are vampires really using Christian metaphors in their love life these days? Just wondering.

Even if they are though, Jesus is the lion AND the lamb, so the metaphor doesn’t make any f*cking sense unless Bella and Edward are supposed to represent Christ falling in love with himself, which seems a bit egotistical for the Son of God. Meyer seems to be pathologically attracted to dialogue that kinda sounds good on first blush, but is either blatantly stupid or just doesn’t make any sense.

7. THE EDITING

(def.) Continuity – 1 a: uninterrupted connection, succession, or union; b: uninterrupted duration or continuation especially without essential change.

I just wanted to throw that out there for the editor, because they have no current relationship with the concept. The number of times that two-shots cut between Bella and Edward, only to return to one of them with a completely different expression on their face, defies belief. Then we also get inexplicable moving third person views intermixed with intimate closeups (when Bella says Edward is a vampire out loud for the first time is the most striking offender). This has to be a strong contender for worst editing, at least in a major release, of all time.

8. THE 2-D CHARACTERS

Why did it take two hours for me to learn f*ckall about these nimrods. Edward is all glowery and shite. Bella likes to bite her lip like it’s made out of, well, Edward. These are shallower leads then the ones in HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL. Thank God for a relatively solid supporting cast, because even though no one in this film is developed to a degree that has even a passing resemblance to interesting, some of the edge players make it seem as if there’s something going on behind their eyes. Nothing that’s developed mind you, but it does offer some small comfort while suffering through the film’s meandering journey to nowhere.

9. THE BASEBALL

What? The? F*CK!!?? Baseball? F*cking baseball? Vampires love to play baseball, but only when there’s a storm because the epic sound of their bats needs thunder to cover it. This is so fundamentally retarded that I find myself unable to bother with explaining why it is so. Like people who believe in Creationism over Evolution. I’m not going to argue with you because you have an indefensible and illogical position. I’m not going to give your opinion merit by addressing it. Vampires playing baseball is f*cking stupid and the storm cover bullshite makes it even worse. Period.

10. THE SOUNDTRACK

The music was clearly picked solely to create an album that the target audience could sit around and feel morosely romantic about. It’s so bad and unsuited to the tone of the film that it actively makes awful scenes worse. It’s the most cynically put together soundtrack I’ve ever encountered.