An Abomination

Rating: 1/10 (8 April 2013)

The Twilight series has never been good; anyone who's trying to convince you otherwise is a preteen girl. But I will say this: up until Breaking Dawn the movies were at least enjoyably bad. Breaking Dawn, however, decides to suck any joy out of it and fill the film with the worst acting and visuals of the entire franchise.
I won't bother recapping the plot here; there's just no point, especially when the books and films are so prominent in pop culture. Instead, let me get into the many things wrong with this film:
-Kristen Stewart rarely smiles in this film. Oh, there are a few forced-looking smiles, but even at her character Bella's wedding she looks downright miserable. Looking miserable all the time worked well for her in Speak; here in a romantic role like this it's just awful
-The long-awaited sex scene is probably one of the most bland, passionless sex scenes ever put to film. Some furniture's destroyed, sure, but still, that isn't enough to save the lifeless lovemaking that occurs between Bella and Edward
-The stupidity of Bella astounded me in the book, and here it's just as bad. Bella easily lets Rosalie talk her into keeping the baby Edward impregnates her with. This is a girl who hated her and wanted to kill her at one point; they may be family now, but still, Bella shouldn't just blindly listen to her stepsister, especially when it becomes increasingly apparent she couldn't care less if Bella lived or died, as long as she gets the baby.
-The film tries to deal with a topic like abortion. And, surprise surprise, they do a terrible job. The way it's brought up is so blunt it looks like it was written by someone who honestly believes all abortions are performed in back alleys with coat hangers. The handling of such a controversial topic can be done well in the right hands, but the Twilight series and Stephanie Meyer are nowhere close to being intelligent or deep enough to handle a topic like this.
-A lot of scenes involving Jacob and the wolf pack are way too dark; I could barely tell what was going on half of the time in those scenes. Not that what was going on in those scenes was particularly interesting, but it was still rather irritating.
-Jacob, played by Taylor Lautner (who, throughout the series, seemed to be giving an 'Ewan McGregor in the Star Wars prequels'-like effort to actually act), imprints on baby Renesmee. While imprinting is not explained well enough for any viewer to understand how it works, the fact that Jacob will someday be dating the newborn is really uncomfortable. While not outright making Jacob a pedophile, it really makes one of the few likable characters left in the movies a lot creepier. This, of course, is kept from the book, because bad choices and poor writing like this could only be the work of a monumental hack like Meyer.
-The birth scene is one of the few things I've ever seen in a movie that made me sick. Not since I saw some of the cut animal scenes from Cannibal Holocaust has a movie actually made me nauseous. It is one of the most tasteless, disgusting scenes ever filmed.
Don't watch this movie. It rivals The Last Airbender film in terms of awfulness. There is so much wrong with this film that it is devoid of the charming stupidity found in Eclipse or even New Moon. If this review doesn't keep you away from this horrific cinematic dung heap, I wish you the best of luck in sitting through it.