Horror comes in many guises. Some horror films are scary for all the right reasons, and some for all the wrong reasons. Some make you hide behind the couch, some make you throw-up behind the couch. Some horror films make you piss and/or shit yourself, and some just piss you off.
Twilight (2008) centres around Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), a seventeen year old girl who moves from her home in Phoenix Arizona to the small town of Forks in the state of Washington as a result of her mother remarrying after divorcing Bella's father. Bella arrives in Forks in the middle of the school year, but as traumatic as that would be she manages to settle in quite quickly and makes friends with ease.
In school, she becomes interested in a boy in her class, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). Edward is one of the adopted children of a local doctor, Carlisle Cullen, and like the other kids in his family Edward keeps very much to himself. The whole Cullen clan are considered unusual and are extreme outsiders in school and in town. This just fascinates Bella even more especially as Edward is her lab partner for Biology class.
As Forks is on the Pacific Northwest coast of the U.S. the weather there is nearly always bad and is mostly overcast, raining, or freezing, and on one cold day Bella is involved in a near-miss of an accident when a friend's van skids out of control on some ice in the school parking lot and nearly hits her. The van is only stopped by the intervention of Edward who jumps in the way of the van in the last moment and is able to stop it from hitting Bella, revealing Ed to be incredibly fast and strong.
Now Bella's imagination goes wild as she tries to figure out who and what Edward is, and her search for answers leads her into the myths and legends that surround the region. She soon finds out the terrible truth about Edward and the whole Cullen family after she realises that only certain creatures are deathly cold to the touch and avoid sunlight like their lives depended on it.
Bella confronts Edward about her discoveries but is surprised to learn that not only did she not figure out every aspect of the Cullen's nature but that she has fallen in love with him despite the truth. Edward and Bella's relationship develops, just as danger approaches Forks.
Where to start with this one? There are problems with Twilight on many levels so I might as well get the obvious stuff out of the way.
Vampires do not fucking sparkle in daylight, they fucking die!
In Twilight, the vampire myth has been largely ignored and the stuff that made it in has been twisted quite severely to fit with the neat idea that the film wants to peddle - that ugly girls can shack-up with girly looking pseudo-vampires and everything will be great.
Strangely though, I can see what they were trying to do with the character of Edward Cullen. Eddie was actually a feeble attempt at a Byronic Hero – the type developed by Lord Byron in his fruity poetry and defined by the phrase “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”. Building a love story about a soppy girl and a Byronic hero is actually a good idea but what went wrong was they made him a vampire and wilfully ignored all the inconveniences of being a creature of the night.
The thing is, in Twilight despite all the vampire lore that was removed the one truly horrific component of the whole business was left in but glossed over. In order to explain this, first a little history: the vampire myth has roots in religion, coming from the idea that those who died after being excommunicated rose from the grave to feast on human blood until the end of the world. Then they go to Hell. In Twilight, the “vampires” are immortal, so somewhere along the line someone had been kicked out of the Church and then kicked the bucket and came back all bitey and sucky. So, some vampire had been punished for dicking around the Church. So, the Cullen’s are vampire descendants of some poor bastard who knows for a fact that there’s a God. The point of the immortality in the vampire story is not that you get to stay young and attractive for ever, it’s a terrible punishment – the vampire knows God exists and they will never meet Him. The only reason the vampire avoids the release of death at the point of a stake (or carbon-tipped bullet if you’re new school) is that they’re trying to put off going to Hell.
The Cullen’s are all going to go to Hell, especially Edward, and Bella falls in love with the guy. Of course, this type of problem doesn’t get a mention in Twilight as, to be fair, the real goal of the film was to make a ton of cash out of teenage girls not promote the further development of a cultural archetype like the vampire. The reason purists get so pissed off with Twilight is that it pisses on the vampire myth and therefore contributes to a new generation of people who don’t understand it or even recognise it. Of course this has been going on as long as films have been made and trashy books written. There were probably a good number of purists annoyed when Bram Stoker got himself a publisher.
Once Edward reveals his nature to Bella by letting some sunlight make his skin all sparkly it’s best to try to ignore the vampire stuff altogether and judge the film on its other merits, of which there are very fucking few.
There isn’t much positive to say about the two leads, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, and so many negative things have been said that I don’t really have anything to add. Except, that Kristen Stewart is a long-faced misery of a girl who should have been in a werewolf movie not a vampire one (and without any make-up either, the dog) and Robert Pattinson is a weird looking girly boy who was completely unbelievable in a role where he played a man who’s attracted to women.
The production quality for a film of this scale, i.e. guaranteed blockbuster, is surprisingly low. Watching Twilight in HD shows up all the terrible flaws in the special effects, make-up, and lighting that are present. The fucking lighting used in Twilight is awful! There are scenes, especially in the school, where characters move their hands in front of their faces and huge shadows are cast, caused by using powerful lights to create a washed out, pale look for the kids. Why not light the scene properly and put a filter on the fucking camera? Or change the colour in post production? Maybe that wasn’t an option as the computer was being used for the shitty effects – the bit where Edward runs up the tree with Bella on his back is cringe worthy. The quality of the production varies and I think that’s a result of the film being made by two units, one with a director of photography who had a clue, and the other with a director of photography who was a dipshit.
The surprising highlight of the movie was the music, surprising as the soundtrack mostly featured songs designed for young women to feel sad to, but also included some gems from bands like Muse. The incidental music was the best part of the soundtrack though and the musical cues, like the tinkling piano indicating "falling" in love, were excellent and well used.
I didn’t like Twilight all that much, but I can’t bring myself to hate it as vehemently as some commentators claim to. It was made in order to cash in on some trashy books that are more popular then they likely deserve (I haven’t read them – I base my opinion of them on the “slavish” film adaptation) just like the work of Dan Brown (the prick). Twilight is a crappy film whose sin is in the way it treats vampires not the audience, as far as I can make out the target audience for Twilight got exactly what they deserved.
One Thumb Up and One Thumb Down for Twilight.
If you have a reflection, don't sleep in a coffin, quite like garlic, don't need to be invited in, aren't bothered by Crucifixes or Holy Water, you might be a vampire! Check out these links for more info:
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1099212/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_(2008_film)
Twilight (2008) centres around Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), a seventeen year old girl who moves from her home in Phoenix Arizona to the small town of Forks in the state of Washington as a result of her mother remarrying after divorcing Bella's father. Bella arrives in Forks in the middle of the school year, but as traumatic as that would be she manages to settle in quite quickly and makes friends with ease.
In school, she becomes interested in a boy in her class, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). Edward is one of the adopted children of a local doctor, Carlisle Cullen, and like the other kids in his family Edward keeps very much to himself. The whole Cullen clan are considered unusual and are extreme outsiders in school and in town. This just fascinates Bella even more especially as Edward is her lab partner for Biology class.
As Forks is on the Pacific Northwest coast of the U.S. the weather there is nearly always bad and is mostly overcast, raining, or freezing, and on one cold day Bella is involved in a near-miss of an accident when a friend's van skids out of control on some ice in the school parking lot and nearly hits her. The van is only stopped by the intervention of Edward who jumps in the way of the van in the last moment and is able to stop it from hitting Bella, revealing Ed to be incredibly fast and strong.
Now Bella's imagination goes wild as she tries to figure out who and what Edward is, and her search for answers leads her into the myths and legends that surround the region. She soon finds out the terrible truth about Edward and the whole Cullen family after she realises that only certain creatures are deathly cold to the touch and avoid sunlight like their lives depended on it.
Bella confronts Edward about her discoveries but is surprised to learn that not only did she not figure out every aspect of the Cullen's nature but that she has fallen in love with him despite the truth. Edward and Bella's relationship develops, just as danger approaches Forks.
Bella suddenly realises what spending the night with a man who's deathly cold ALL over would actually mean
Where to start with this one? There are problems with Twilight on many levels so I might as well get the obvious stuff out of the way.
Vampires do not fucking sparkle in daylight, they fucking die!
In Twilight, the vampire myth has been largely ignored and the stuff that made it in has been twisted quite severely to fit with the neat idea that the film wants to peddle - that ugly girls can shack-up with girly looking pseudo-vampires and everything will be great.
Strangely though, I can see what they were trying to do with the character of Edward Cullen. Eddie was actually a feeble attempt at a Byronic Hero – the type developed by Lord Byron in his fruity poetry and defined by the phrase “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”. Building a love story about a soppy girl and a Byronic hero is actually a good idea but what went wrong was they made him a vampire and wilfully ignored all the inconveniences of being a creature of the night.
The thing is, in Twilight despite all the vampire lore that was removed the one truly horrific component of the whole business was left in but glossed over. In order to explain this, first a little history: the vampire myth has roots in religion, coming from the idea that those who died after being excommunicated rose from the grave to feast on human blood until the end of the world. Then they go to Hell. In Twilight, the “vampires” are immortal, so somewhere along the line someone had been kicked out of the Church and then kicked the bucket and came back all bitey and sucky. So, some vampire had been punished for dicking around the Church. So, the Cullen’s are vampire descendants of some poor bastard who knows for a fact that there’s a God. The point of the immortality in the vampire story is not that you get to stay young and attractive for ever, it’s a terrible punishment – the vampire knows God exists and they will never meet Him. The only reason the vampire avoids the release of death at the point of a stake (or carbon-tipped bullet if you’re new school) is that they’re trying to put off going to Hell.
The Cullen’s are all going to go to Hell, especially Edward, and Bella falls in love with the guy. Of course, this type of problem doesn’t get a mention in Twilight as, to be fair, the real goal of the film was to make a ton of cash out of teenage girls not promote the further development of a cultural archetype like the vampire. The reason purists get so pissed off with Twilight is that it pisses on the vampire myth and therefore contributes to a new generation of people who don’t understand it or even recognise it. Of course this has been going on as long as films have been made and trashy books written. There were probably a good number of purists annoyed when Bram Stoker got himself a publisher.
Once Edward reveals his nature to Bella by letting some sunlight make his skin all sparkly it’s best to try to ignore the vampire stuff altogether and judge the film on its other merits, of which there are very fucking few.
There isn’t much positive to say about the two leads, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, and so many negative things have been said that I don’t really have anything to add. Except, that Kristen Stewart is a long-faced misery of a girl who should have been in a werewolf movie not a vampire one (and without any make-up either, the dog) and Robert Pattinson is a weird looking girly boy who was completely unbelievable in a role where he played a man who’s attracted to women.
Bella and Edward exchange make-up tips. In the middle of the day. Vampire my arse!
The production quality for a film of this scale, i.e. guaranteed blockbuster, is surprisingly low. Watching Twilight in HD shows up all the terrible flaws in the special effects, make-up, and lighting that are present. The fucking lighting used in Twilight is awful! There are scenes, especially in the school, where characters move their hands in front of their faces and huge shadows are cast, caused by using powerful lights to create a washed out, pale look for the kids. Why not light the scene properly and put a filter on the fucking camera? Or change the colour in post production? Maybe that wasn’t an option as the computer was being used for the shitty effects – the bit where Edward runs up the tree with Bella on his back is cringe worthy. The quality of the production varies and I think that’s a result of the film being made by two units, one with a director of photography who had a clue, and the other with a director of photography who was a dipshit.
The surprising highlight of the movie was the music, surprising as the soundtrack mostly featured songs designed for young women to feel sad to, but also included some gems from bands like Muse. The incidental music was the best part of the soundtrack though and the musical cues, like the tinkling piano indicating "falling" in love, were excellent and well used.
I didn’t like Twilight all that much, but I can’t bring myself to hate it as vehemently as some commentators claim to. It was made in order to cash in on some trashy books that are more popular then they likely deserve (I haven’t read them – I base my opinion of them on the “slavish” film adaptation) just like the work of Dan Brown (the prick). Twilight is a crappy film whose sin is in the way it treats vampires not the audience, as far as I can make out the target audience for Twilight got exactly what they deserved.
One Thumb Up and One Thumb Down for Twilight.
If you have a reflection, don't sleep in a coffin, quite like garlic, don't need to be invited in, aren't bothered by Crucifixes or Holy Water, you might be a vampire! Check out these links for more info:
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1099212/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_(2008_film)
Labels: Movies
This movie is a sequel and discussion of it requires references to the ending of the original movie
If you haven’t seen 30 Days of Night, then you’re a gobshite, but you can read the review here so that might help a little. Gobshite!
Cinema, like professional sport, is cursed by the commercial forces at play in the industry. Films have investors who front the large sums needed to produce and distribute the movies and these investors don’t care about the material, they care about making money. In mainstream Hollywood, everyone is in it for the money. So if cinema is cursed, certain parts of it are more cursed then others. Horror probably comes off the worse (don’t bother to even think about pornography – that sector is a pure cash cow and no-one wants stories, characters, or any other artistic merit in those movies anyway). When a good horror film is released and goes on to be successful the pressures for a sequel are huge, but the expected return on a sequel is higher than the original because, as far as the investors are concerned, with a sequel you’re investing in an established brand, there’s less risk as the fans of the first are almost guaranteed to see the follow-up. For smaller production companies this puts a ton of pressure on everyone concerned to generate a big return in cash terms, so the easiest thing to do is cut the cost of the production down to the bone so that even if the film doesn’t do well at the box office there’ll still be a profit for the nice folks who paid for it.
Cutting costs on a movie production is a savage business. High paid, big star actors are definitely out, then goes the effects budget, next locations are trimmed down and filming only occurs in tax efficient places (shit-loads of films and TV programmes are made in Vancouver, Canada for this very reason – it looks like any American city and costs fuck all to film there), then the production crew suffers from the cuts, and finally the writing and directing team are selected from the bottom of the barrel. The ultimate tragedy of the movie business is that it’s a business at all. However, the lowest budget films out there can be surprisingly good, some go on to be legendary successes. El Mariachi (Robert Rodriguez’s first film) was made for less than $10,000 as were Pi, and Primer, both brilliant sci-fi pieces. There have been many low budget horrors, some great and some shite, so the genre is always prepared to suffer at the hands of the accountants, remembering that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Like Vampires.
30 Days of Night: Dark Days picks up the story of Stella and Eben Oleson (Olemaun in the comics) right where the first movie left them – sitting in the snow watching the sun rise after the vampire attack on Barrow, Alaska. The rising sun kills Eben as he’d become a vampire in order to save Stella and the few other survivors leaving Stella to face the world alone, a world she knows is inhabited by vampires.
Several months after the attack on Barrow, Stella has taken to travelling around the country in an effort to educate people about the existence of vampires. Her efforts have been less than successful despite the assistance she’s been getting from an unknown source that sends her information and seems to know accurate details about the Barrow attack. Arriving in Los Angeles, Stella gives a lecture to a disbelieving audience about vampires. Sick of the mocking response she keeps getting she’s decided to out some vampires and does so by switching on lights that mimic sunlight, causing several members of the crowd to reveal themselves as vamps by burning up in front of everyone.
This stunt attracts the attention of a small band of vampire hunters who’ve been working the area and have heard of Stella and the things that had happened in Alaska. They convince Stella to join them when they explain that they have a half-turned vampire working with them to provide inside data on the vampires activities and, more importantly, how the vampires are organised. The half-vamp turns out to be the source of the information Stella has been receiving.
The vampires are organised into a simple structure with a queen ruling them and the group of vampire hunters plan to kill her in order to throw the remaining vampires into chaos. Each of the vampire hunters have personal experience with the vampire menace and have all lost loved ones to the creatures, but their hatred and passion doesn’t mean that they are capable of successfully fighting vampires, especially not their Queen, the enigmatic and powerful Lilith, who has laid her plans carefully and positioned her spies well.
The original 30 Days of Night is the best example of a modern vampire film I can think of. The vampires are terrifyingly monstrous and the predicament of the town of Barrow is a well executed horror in every sense. Any sequel would have a hard job keeping up the standard the original set and sadly Dark Days doesn’t come close.
All of the budget problems that can damage a film seem to have been thrown at Dark Days and the resulting movie was released straight to video this year. None of the original cast return for Dark Days (so I guess I was right to question whether Melissa George would be right for a sequel when I reviewed 30 Days back in 2008) which immediately puts the film onto a poor footing, especially as the opening scene of the film is a re-shot version of the final scene of the original with two new actors for Stella and Eben.
The actors who do feature in the film are from the bargain basement of jobbing TV actors and they’ve all turned up in one episode of every US TV show going; I imagine they all knew each other from when they met on the set of Law and Order, or Criminal Minds, or Castle, or whatever. The actual production was obviously done on the cheap, with the visuals and editing suffering the most. Music was scrimped on so badly that the score is noticeable more by its absence in scenes then its content, the lack of music to build tension in certain scenes is so bad that you can’t feel fear for the characters and bits of the movie that were meant to be creepy are just dull.
The one thing they did right in making Dark Days was to bring in Steve Niles to co-write the screenplay as he’s the writer of the original comics upon which 30 Days is based. However, for some reason never explained, the story in Dark Days is wildly different from the comic, with only the very beginning and the gist of the ending getting into the movie. Dark Days the comic is not as good as the original but it would still have made a better film then the one that made it onto DVD. Dark Days is, unfortunately, a fairly stock vampire hunting story but not a really bad one just not as good as it should have been. The twists and turns are reasonable and the character of Lilith is intriguing as is the FBI agent who wants to be a vampire in order to avoid dying from the terminal illness he has.
I wish Dark Days was better, but I understand why it isn’t, and I am glad it wasn’t worse.
One Thumb Up and One Thumb Down for 30 Days of Night: Dark Days
30 Days of Links:
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1320304/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_Days_of_Night:_Dark_Days
This movie is a sequel and discussion of it requires references to the ending of the original movie
If you haven’t seen 30 Days of Night, then you’re a gobshite, but you can read the review here so that might help a little. Gobshite!
*****************************************************************
Cinema, like professional sport, is cursed by the commercial forces at play in the industry. Films have investors who front the large sums needed to produce and distribute the movies and these investors don’t care about the material, they care about making money. In mainstream Hollywood, everyone is in it for the money. So if cinema is cursed, certain parts of it are more cursed then others. Horror probably comes off the worse (don’t bother to even think about pornography – that sector is a pure cash cow and no-one wants stories, characters, or any other artistic merit in those movies anyway). When a good horror film is released and goes on to be successful the pressures for a sequel are huge, but the expected return on a sequel is higher than the original because, as far as the investors are concerned, with a sequel you’re investing in an established brand, there’s less risk as the fans of the first are almost guaranteed to see the follow-up. For smaller production companies this puts a ton of pressure on everyone concerned to generate a big return in cash terms, so the easiest thing to do is cut the cost of the production down to the bone so that even if the film doesn’t do well at the box office there’ll still be a profit for the nice folks who paid for it.
Cutting costs on a movie production is a savage business. High paid, big star actors are definitely out, then goes the effects budget, next locations are trimmed down and filming only occurs in tax efficient places (shit-loads of films and TV programmes are made in Vancouver, Canada for this very reason – it looks like any American city and costs fuck all to film there), then the production crew suffers from the cuts, and finally the writing and directing team are selected from the bottom of the barrel. The ultimate tragedy of the movie business is that it’s a business at all. However, the lowest budget films out there can be surprisingly good, some go on to be legendary successes. El Mariachi (Robert Rodriguez’s first film) was made for less than $10,000 as were Pi, and Primer, both brilliant sci-fi pieces. There have been many low budget horrors, some great and some shite, so the genre is always prepared to suffer at the hands of the accountants, remembering that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Like Vampires.
30 Days of Night: Dark Days picks up the story of Stella and Eben Oleson (Olemaun in the comics) right where the first movie left them – sitting in the snow watching the sun rise after the vampire attack on Barrow, Alaska. The rising sun kills Eben as he’d become a vampire in order to save Stella and the few other survivors leaving Stella to face the world alone, a world she knows is inhabited by vampires.
Several months after the attack on Barrow, Stella has taken to travelling around the country in an effort to educate people about the existence of vampires. Her efforts have been less than successful despite the assistance she’s been getting from an unknown source that sends her information and seems to know accurate details about the Barrow attack. Arriving in Los Angeles, Stella gives a lecture to a disbelieving audience about vampires. Sick of the mocking response she keeps getting she’s decided to out some vampires and does so by switching on lights that mimic sunlight, causing several members of the crowd to reveal themselves as vamps by burning up in front of everyone.
This stunt attracts the attention of a small band of vampire hunters who’ve been working the area and have heard of Stella and the things that had happened in Alaska. They convince Stella to join them when they explain that they have a half-turned vampire working with them to provide inside data on the vampires activities and, more importantly, how the vampires are organised. The half-vamp turns out to be the source of the information Stella has been receiving.
The vampires are organised into a simple structure with a queen ruling them and the group of vampire hunters plan to kill her in order to throw the remaining vampires into chaos. Each of the vampire hunters have personal experience with the vampire menace and have all lost loved ones to the creatures, but their hatred and passion doesn’t mean that they are capable of successfully fighting vampires, especially not their Queen, the enigmatic and powerful Lilith, who has laid her plans carefully and positioned her spies well.
So that's what happened to Sinead O'Connor!
The original 30 Days of Night is the best example of a modern vampire film I can think of. The vampires are terrifyingly monstrous and the predicament of the town of Barrow is a well executed horror in every sense. Any sequel would have a hard job keeping up the standard the original set and sadly Dark Days doesn’t come close.
All of the budget problems that can damage a film seem to have been thrown at Dark Days and the resulting movie was released straight to video this year. None of the original cast return for Dark Days (so I guess I was right to question whether Melissa George would be right for a sequel when I reviewed 30 Days back in 2008) which immediately puts the film onto a poor footing, especially as the opening scene of the film is a re-shot version of the final scene of the original with two new actors for Stella and Eben.
The actors who do feature in the film are from the bargain basement of jobbing TV actors and they’ve all turned up in one episode of every US TV show going; I imagine they all knew each other from when they met on the set of Law and Order, or Criminal Minds, or Castle, or whatever. The actual production was obviously done on the cheap, with the visuals and editing suffering the most. Music was scrimped on so badly that the score is noticeable more by its absence in scenes then its content, the lack of music to build tension in certain scenes is so bad that you can’t feel fear for the characters and bits of the movie that were meant to be creepy are just dull.
The one thing they did right in making Dark Days was to bring in Steve Niles to co-write the screenplay as he’s the writer of the original comics upon which 30 Days is based. However, for some reason never explained, the story in Dark Days is wildly different from the comic, with only the very beginning and the gist of the ending getting into the movie. Dark Days the comic is not as good as the original but it would still have made a better film then the one that made it onto DVD. Dark Days is, unfortunately, a fairly stock vampire hunting story but not a really bad one just not as good as it should have been. The twists and turns are reasonable and the character of Lilith is intriguing as is the FBI agent who wants to be a vampire in order to avoid dying from the terminal illness he has.
I wish Dark Days was better, but I understand why it isn’t, and I am glad it wasn’t worse.
One Thumb Up and One Thumb Down for 30 Days of Night: Dark Days
30 Days of Links:
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1320304/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_Days_of_Night:_Dark_Days
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