This movie was garbage.

Rating: 1/10 (30 December 2008)

Good adaptation? Excellent movie? I hope those of you writing these reviews never watch another movie again. I'm marking it as "spoiler" because it MIGHT contain some small ones, but if you go see this movie, it's already spoiled, rotted, and dessicated without any help from me.
This movie stank. It was inept on almost every level. The acting was mediocre at best, the characters were poorly developed, the camera work was painful at times, the effects were laughably bad, the wirework is the worst I've ever seen, and the whole story is so ludicrous that I wanted to rip my hair out.
First off, these aren't vampires. Dracula was a vampire. These "vampires" have almost nothing in common aside from drinking blood and being immortal and...wait, that's it. They walk in the daylight (and ooh! They sparkle, because teenie girls love sparkles!), they don't have fangs, they don't sleep in coffins, turn into bats, don't have an aversion to silver or garlic, walk over running water, don't mind crosses...the list goes on. Some of that is forgivable, but all of it? Nope. This is yet another pop-culture pussification of vampires, turning them into something ludicrous and throwing almost all the mythology out the window. Give me a nightwalking, bloodsucking, evil minion of the devil any day of the week. Don't call the Twilight "vampires" by that name because, quite frankly, they're not.
Was the director of this movie high the whole time? Did she bother to try directing the actors, much less go over their dialog and realize that no normal human being would talk like that? The culmination of the two would be Bella blubbering in bed at the end for Edward to not leave her. I almost burst out laughing, but by then my soul had been sapped to the point that I thought laughter would be impossible. And I think her only direction for the vampires was, "Okay, ready, set, ACTION! Okay guys, SMOLDER! SMOLDER! SMOLDER!", because that's about the extent of the vampire "acting" in this movie. Lots of smoldering looks and very little else. And couldn't she have made sure the effects weren't awful? Seriously, who could have seen the fast vampire effect and thought it looked better than Scifi channel original movie effects? Did the director blow all the budget on crack to use while she was making this? And what was with the horrid wirework? Seriously. Watch Edward jumping from his window to the tree outside and see how he moves in a perfectly straight line. Watch the bad vampire jump over Bella and watch how his trajectory dips, then arcs UP, then drops in front of her. It's unbelievable. And did anyone else notice how the camera-work in the woods when Bella says she knows that Edward is a vampire was pointless and utterly distracting? Sorry, but that's not a good way to convey what was happening. Try again. Oh, wait, the studio decided you couldn't. Sorry.
Why the heck is Edward so dreamy? He's a creepy stalker! He sneaks into Bella's room at night and watches her sleep? Oooh, so romantic! I sneak into a girl's room at night to watch her sleep? Pepper spray, a boot to the balls, and lots of community service. He follows her around wherever she goes? Nah, not stalking at all. He's just enamored with her and it's sooo dreamy! What a hairy load. Setting aside his saving her life twice (a contrivance so they can speed things up and they don't have to make them fall in love the old fashioned way), Edward could do anything to her and it would be so wonderful. I cannot understand that. Maybe that's why so many women will date total jerks and excuse everything they do. It explains a lot, actually.
Sorry, but his movie is crap. Those who love it are likely so whipped up into a fervor about the book being turned into a movie that they'd watch anything with Edward in it. It could be Hostel 3: Vampire Style with Edward ripping limbs off of Bella in a bloodbath and it would be wonderful to them. Girls, I know you're obsessed with this fictional character in ways that only hardcore comic book nerds could ever hope to match, but please, step out of that bubble and actually WATCH the movie. Please. We don't need any more lazy, crappy cinema staining the multiplex screens. There's enough of that coming out of Hollywood these days. My wife loves the books (and I get to hear all about them...groan), but at least she's not so wrapped up in it that she couldn't admit the movie sucked. She's at least got that going for her. Other fans with claw your eyes out if you dare speak ill of it. Makes me wanna puke.