Cultural Gap Film #6: Twilight

Relevant elements: Teen vampire melodrama

Why it resonated: Who can say why vampires become a trend every 10 years? There's always been something vaguely adolescent about vampire fascination, what with the moodiness, swells of sensuality, and so on, but for some reason this iteration spoke unusually deafeningly to the current generation of teenagers.   

General comments on the film: This is the first of these films I've watched that honestly felt like a waste of time. I didn't really learn anything from the experience that I didn't already know about the film or its impact on our culture. 

Going into it, I expected a fairly badly made movie, and in that sense Twilight was not a disappointment. Just about every element is handled poorly: the pacing drags, the acting is lifeless, the exposition is clumsy, the voiceover narration is spotty and artless, the story is unoriginal, the cinematography is distractingly ham-handed (just watch the "You're a vampire" scene in the forest for an example).... I could go on and on. Actually, I think I will. Here are two of the countless "Really?" moments: the benign vampire family playing baseball in the woods in a thunderstorm (?!?!) and the tone-deaf closing scene with the lone remaining "bad" vampire walking toward our lovestruck heroes at their prom to the wholly mismatched Radiohead song "15 Step." Even the closing credits don't strike the right note.

But enough complaints about what is--I'm sorry, I can't stop. Why is the world so blue-tinted? Why is everyone--not just the vampires--so inhumanly pale? Why does there seem to be only one teacher in the high school, why is he so incredibly excited about biology, and why aren't the students rolling their eyes at him incessantly? Isn't it enough that there are vampires in this world? Do they have to be telepathic and clairvoyant as well? Why not just let them travel through time and breathe fire? Did Bella really need to do internet research to find out what a vampire is? And finally, has there ever been a more deliciously spot-on description than Nathan Rabin labeling Kristen Stewart a "dead-eyed talent vacuum"?   

OK. I think I'm done. But just in case that paragraph didn't suck out all the venom and stop me from turning into a blood-lusting monster (yet another cliched plot point in the film), let me end this quickly by saying to any of you who haven't seen this movie that it is exactly what you think it is.