Twilight (2008): Movie Review

First off, before I go on, I would just like to say that this movie was overly hyped for nothing. Now, I’ll begin. Basically, this movie is about a teenage girl, Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), who falls in love with a male vampire named Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). Twilight was released in the theaters on November 21, 2008 in the United States and in Canada and grossed $35.7 million on its opening day. That’s quite a lot for a movie like this.

When I first saw the trailer for this movie, I was expecting it to be more of a awesome vampire story, but unfortunately it was just a misleading movie trailer like most over hyped movies. The movie tries to be a vampire story, and a love story, which is good, but because the direction (Catherine Hardwicke) was not so good, the movie did not perform at it’s best. Acting wise, both Robert Pattinson, and Kristen Stewart could have performed better. They do have potential, and hopefully they will gain enough experience in all the movies that they are going to act and give us great performance later on in the future. As for the hype and reviews, they are all just full of it. I read in a magazine saying that this is the best romantic movie since Titanic. Make no mistake people, this movie is nowhere close to what Titanic was. Overall, Twilight was just an average movie trying to be a great movie. It could have been better if the direction was better and also if the acting was better.

Here’s the plot of the movie taken directly from Wikipedia. There might be SPOILERS, so please be warned. S indicates the start point and F indicates the end point of the plot. Begin highlighting from S and end at F to view the plot.

S“Seventeen-year-old Bella Swan moves to the small town of Forks, Washington to live with her father, Charlie, after her mother remarries a minor league baseball player. She is quickly befriended by many students at her new high school, where she is intrigued by a mysterious group of siblings known as the Cullens. Bella sits next to Edward Cullen in Biology class on her first day of school, and he appears to be disgusted by her, much to Bella’s confusion. A few days later, Bella is nearly struck by a van, when Edward suddenly appears and stops the vehicle with his hand. Although he refuses to explain this act to Bella, Edward warns her against becoming friends with him.

Bella eventually discovers that Edward is a vampire, though he only consumes animal blood, and the pair fall in love. After Edward introduces Bella to his vampire family, Carlisle, Esme, Alice, Jasper, Emmett, and Rosalie, three nomadic vampires—James, Victoria, and Laurent—arrive and put Bella’s life in danger. James, a tracker vampire, is intrigued by Edward’s protectiveness over a human, and decides to hunt her for sport. Edward and his family put their lives at risk to protect Bella, but James lures her into a trap by making her believe he is holding her mother hostage. James attacks Bella and bites her wrist, but Edward, along with the rest of the Cullen family, arrives before he can kill her. James is destroyed, and Edward sucks the venom from James’s bite out of Bella’s wrist, preventing her from becoming a vampire herself. A severely injured Bella is then taken to the hospital to spend some time recovering. Upon returning to Forks, Bella and Edward attend their prom and Bella expresses her desire to become a vampire, which Edward refuses to let happen. The film ends showing Victoria at the prom watching the pair dance together, ready to seek revenge for the murder of her lover, James.”F

If you didn’t read the plot which contained spoilers, here’s a spoiler free summary of the plot;

“Bella falls in love with Edward, who is a vampire. She slowly discovers what abilities Edward has. Soon after their love starts growing, Bella’s live is in danger because of a tracker vampire, James. This causes Edward to do his best to protect his love, Bella.“

Hopefully that was a good enough summary for the movie. That should give you an idea on what the movie is about.

So, when the movie first came out, I really didn’t have any intention on watching it as I already knew that the movie wasn’t going to be that good. So, what made me watch the movie? Well it’s all because of the movie’s soundtrack titled Decode. Decode is performed by Paramore, and it is a beautiful song. Paramore did a great job for the song, but the music video might be a little too awesome for this movie, as it is quite misleading. But, I love the song and the music video, which made me want to watch the movie, even though I knew the movie wasn’t going to be very good. All in all, the movie has a lot of potential. If you can overlook the few flaws the movie has to offer, you will enjoy it. My suggestion would be to wait until the DVD comes out, and then just rent it. But it’s up to you, some people might love the movie, and others might not. Hopefully this review gave everyone a rough idea on what the movie is like, so that you can decide to watch it or not.

Final Verdict: 3 / 5