Not really good or bad

Rating: 6/10 (29 November 2008)

As someone who read the book and is not a big fan, I went into this movie thinking it was going to be horribly cheesy and unintentionally hilarious. It certainly was cheesy in some parts, however, overall it wasn't as bad as I expected. Yes, a lot of the dialouge is atrocious ("This is the skin of a killer!") and there are some odd editing choices (extreme close-ups of people's eyeballs, choppy editing, sepia toning flashbacks to make them seem 'old-fashioned'), but this could have been A LOT worse. I think credit can be given to the director for handling certain scenes very well, like the make-out scene between Edward and Bella. She made it pretty hot by not overlaying it with generic background music or weird close-up panning shots of their lips and/or hands caressing one another.
My only complaint (other than the dialouge) was the pacing. It was very slow at the beginning, setting up the story and introducing all the characters (there are far too many by the way, I feel like I know that one girl that tries to be Bella's friend better than any of the Cullens, other than Edward). Then, in the last 30 minutes of the film, the 'bad' vampires come in and create a problem which is resolved too quickly to make any kind of impact on the audience.
I give this a 6 for being better than I expected, but still not really good.