Not As Bad As Many Would Have You Believe

Rating: 6/10 (26 April 2012)

I guess I should start by saying that almost everyone I know ridicules the 'Twilight' series. Those few people I've met who like it are so fanatically obsessive towards it that I sometimes have to remind myself that it isn't a religious cult. Anyway, I decided that before I join in with either side of the debate I should give it a 'fair crack of the whip'. In all honesty, I was expecting it to be awful. However I was pleasantly surprised.
I think it is important to note that I'm not what many would consider to be the demographic towards which this movie aims. I'm a British, adult male and I'd imagine that the stereotypical twilight fan is perceived as being an American teen-girl. After all, the protagonist is just that and I certainly can't relate to what it must be like to be a teenager in an American high-school.
The first thing that surprised me about Twilight was the acting, which was pretty good. Kristen Stewart seems to have garnered a reputation for being a somewhat wooden and emotionless actress. I haven't seen the other movies in the series but I felt that she really owned the role of Bella. Rather than play an annoying and eccentric teenager, she opted to put forward a very realistic response, that of a normal girl in an abnormal situation. This was a brave choice on her part considering the reaction of humanity to vampires in most popular media. Of course, she was bound by the script, but she could have over-played it and she didn't. Unfortunately, some of the supporting cast seemed a little too stereotypical and this lack of chemistry ruined some of the scenes, but it wasn't bad enough to ruin the movie as a whole.
Some of the characters seemed a little silly. I'm not too sure if this is the case in the books because I haven't read them, but some of the dialogue was quite inane and it made the characters seem a little one-dimensional. Fortunately, the core of the cast was interesting enough for me to be able to get past this.
The sound-track for the film seemed well chosen. The score fits the scenes well and is diverse enough to add a real sense of emotion when it's needed. The director made some pretty good use of light and dark, particularly in the forest sequences and the fights were well choreographed and quite exciting.
At times the plot was a little too predictable and often it felt quite contrived. This did make it hard to feel any real sense of suspense but the charmingly unusual nature of the concept which drives the film, that is, a family of benevolent vampires living in a small town, was enough for this to become bearable.
To summarise, this movie is certainly not the masterpiece that the hard-core fans make it out to be, but it is definitely worth an evening in front of the T.V if you're feeling a little bored. It has led me to wonder just how many of its detractors have actually bothered to check it out.