Twilight Review

The critical response in 2008 splits along a line that had very little to do with the movie itself. Most reviewers found the pacing slack, the effects cheap and the central romance inert, and the aggregates landed at rotten with a mixed average, which is a fair description of what is on screen. Catherine Hardwicke does two things well. The first is atmosphere: Elliot Davis drains the Pacific Northwest to blue and gray until the town looks anemic, and the wet forest photography lends a cheap production a real mood, even if the camerawork inside the school is ordinary.

The second is the sense of being seventeen and unbearably self aware, which Hardwicke had already proven she understood, and which the sequels lose the moment the budgets grow. What sinks it is the dialogue and the staging around it. Long scenes of two people announcing feelings at each other, a baseball game that exists to sell a soundtrack, and vampires who sparkle in a way no amount of commitment can carry.

Kristen Stewart was ridiculed for a performance that reads considerably better now that her later work is on the record, and Robert Pattinson has said openly that he found the material ridiculous. The film made an enormous amount of money and set the template for a decade of studio young adult adaptations, which is the honest reason it matters.