Still a better love story than La La Land

Rating: 6/10 (23 August 2019)

Watchable piece of Gothic Urban Fantasy Romance with a great atmosphere in its foggy little one-horse town and a very likeable heroin. I'd marry Bella Swan...
Everything is realized with skill and panache making it quite enchanting if you're willing to turn your brain off for a bit.
My big issue with this movie is the same one I had for My Neighbour Totoru: there isn't really enough conflict or stakes to constitute an actual plot until just before the final leg.
Let me explain what I mean: I assumed that in this movie Bella would have a bad time for a bit and then find happiness in the attention from the handsome older supernatural man taking an interest in her even though the romance would be forbidden. Although Bella is understandably a little melancholic about her distance from her Mom and her new surroundings, she actually isn't bullied at all, she makes friends easily and there are two boys after her. And these boys are two DIFFERENT boys competing for her than the two who are in the sequel.
Her Dad actually buys her a car. It's not an amazing car but it's something. Also, everyone on both families is just way too nice about the romance. Not one of the vampires even gives an impression of not trusting Bella. There are so many ways that conflict could be drummed up but aren't.
The last act is also rather tacked on. It feels like they realized that they had sort of run out of ideas (by which I mean, miss Meyers did) and conjured up some villains ex nihilo. A similar problem is also found in Totoru.
But to it's credit, Twilight's version of a tacked-on climax is used as an opportunity to explore its themes of temptation and immortality and it's only the first quarter of its story anyway. I know how weird this must sound but the Twilight Saga is a bit like The Ring of the Nibelungen in its structure: four parts, with the first really just to establish some themes, characters and relationships. So when people tell you the Twilight is one quarter of a movie, they're right. That's what it was meant to be.
Twilight is an inevitably fascinating picture for the phenomenon it has been culturally. I sincerely believe this shift in how we want to see vampires tells us something about our culture and Meyer's own Mormon faith only adds to that. Edward is a vampire but he is one divorced from the religious subtext of Stoker or Polidori. He is not a demon, he is just a man (note how I didn't say "person") dealing with original sin and temptations he knows he might not be able to control so virtuously tries to resist until he cannot anymore. He is blessed and also burdened with an immortality of sorts and the power to bequeath it but is unwilling to do so too easily, much like the Mormon God. (seriously check out Mormon theology; it is not Christianity as you think you know it).
The element with the Native Americans too is interesting given the racial element of Mormon scripture, this tribe sort of serving as a stand in for black people.
Having read the book, I think it captures the tone of the book and gives it a professional polish as well as anyone could hope it would. Go in with an open mind and really suspend that disbelief and I think you'll find something quite passable.