Not very good by any stretch of the imagination

Rating: 3/10 (21 November 2008)

I haven't read any of the books, so all i knew going in was that it was a romance that involved vampires. What I got was a facefull of crap actors and absolutely TERRIBLE special effects. The whole forbidden love thing has potential as a story, but it gets it's fudge thoroughly packed by the script, which i must say elevates missing the mark to an art form. The writer apparently wants us to just take his word for it when he says that what's-his-name and who's-her-face are in love instead of writing in any actual character development. All of the emotional love scenes in the movie equate to blank stares and heavy breathing.
The nature of this romance seems to take a page out of the book of Romeo and Juliet in that two people can fall in love for sake of plot convenience without getting to know each other first. I mean come on! he's in love with her because she smells good and she's in love with him for........... actually we never find this out because it seems like the writer wrote a complete and logical plot and then blasted holes in it with a 12 guage shotgun.
There were a couple of parts where what's-her-face's voice offered up a couple lines of poetic (yet often irrelevant) diologue and these we're actually quite well written. So it seems to me like the novels are actually pretty good even though they seem to be following in the same cashgrabby vein as harry potter and Darren shan only with the target demographic tweaked slightly.
I'm gonna call this movie like i see it. A cashgrab. crap actors (you're not fooling anyone with that accent Robert), absolutely (and i cannot overstate this) ATROCIOUS special effects, plot holes up the rear and a bad case of headache caused by disorienting camera angles (the epic rotating lord of the rings camera isn't the be all end all of directing guys... come on... don't distract from your crappy movie by showing off the scenery). Honestly there was one part in particular where the two "lovers" we're standing in the woods, just standing there, and they did the epic rotating lord of the rings camera angle around them for about 30 seconds... the logic here seems to be that spinning cameras will keep the audience busy so that they won't notice the hundreds of unnecessary silent moments.
One thing i found really annoying was that in EVERY SINGLE SCENE the main character with the pointy teeth and an external genitalia showed off his vampire powers at least twenty times. Seriously. WE DON'T NEED TO BE REMINDED EVERY TWELVE SECONDS THAT HES A VAMPIRE! There was one scene where the male protagonist's car drove up with the female protagonist in the passenger seat. Whats-his-name got out of the car and insisted on vampire running 3 feet to the other side of the car to open his girlfriend's door. WE GET IT! HE'S FAST! I think the director overestimates his special effects budget judging by the amount of redundant leaping and running the vampires do.
Oh and one more thing... There is no conflict in this movie save for a ten minute period between a baseball game and the end. There's a whole thing about whats-his-name not being able to resist killing what's-her-name but it never feels like a genuine threat because the vampires in this movie are officially the lamest incarnation of vampires in fiction ever. I thought the ones in Darren shan were bad, but seriously... Sparkles? come on. They seem more concerned with having incestuous relationships and playing baseball than about maiming something, torturing it and the exsanguinating it like all the manly vampires over in Underworld or Dusk Till Dawn.
All in all the story is kind of interesting but it gets a massive axe in the chest from the crap writing and the terrible acting. check it out if you're a squealing teenage girl who digs the whole thing about lovers sharing a silent moment staring into each other's eyes and holding each other close without having any good reason to love each other at all.