An unbiased review.

Rating: 4/10 (23 December 2008)

As Edward Cullen's half naked body gleams with crystals as he stands in the sun of a seemingly mythical forest, he smiles. He says that this is why vampires throughout the ages can't be seen in the sun. At this point, I think I understood what kind of movie this was supposed to be.
I had seen the TV spots for Twilight, and heard of how great the books were, but never really knew what all the fuss was about. A few of my friends said that the movie was a must-see (unsuprisingly, they were without a Y chromosome). Next thing I knew, I was taken in a theater with hundreds of screaming high school girls, being force fed little known facts about every one of the characters.
As a movie, from someone who has never touched one of the books, it fails pretty horribly. Apart from some truly beautiful scenery, there's really nothing to savor in this film. Robert Patterson and Kristen Stewart are decent in the lead performances, showing that they really do have some potential with better direction. The supporting actors, however, were uniformly terrible. The "bad" vampires and young werewolves were especially horrendous.
I saw where this movie was trying to go, but it desperately needed a better director. The movie seems to mock the audience's intelligence, flashing back to earlier parts of the movie many times to remind us what happened. After about the halfway point, I completely lost interest in where the story was going. Unless you're an avid fan of the books, this is definitely not worth the $9 admission.