Screaming girls and sparkling vampires.

It seems all around there's a shitstorm of screaming girls, parody videos, humorous comics, and blog rants, all aimed squarely at the pop phenomenon with sparkly vampires, even South Park has a few digs. It's something I've just tried to ignore, Twilight was never a film that I'd be interested in, The Twilight Samurai is more my kind of movie, but more and more it just seemed like I was missing out on something big. Maybe it was morbid curiosity, that I had to know was this really as bad as everyone said it was? Or did I just want to get in on the joke? Whatever reason, I needed to have an opinion on the film itself, I need to go find the body and see it with my own eyes even if I new in advance how horrible it was going to be.

To my surprise, it's not the worst film I've ever seen. Now it is indeed horrible, and sure it is camp, the acting is stilted and awkward, the plot is shallow, the characters flat and poorly developed, the dialogue is thoroughly horrendous, and the special effects are hilariously bad, but despite all that (or perhaps because of it) I did kind of enjoy the film to a degree. Amid the stiff romance of the wooden and chemistry-free leads, there's a great deal of some extremely silly and unintentionally funny scenes. Vampire baseball anyone? I'd ask anyone to watch Twilight and not laugh at that, how a scene as contrived and ridiculous as that could make it into the film without irony.

The chuckles start fairly early. There's a scene where the nauseatingly aloof lead Bella first meets the heart-throb vampire boy Edward, and it comes across like the scene in Wayne's World where Garth falls in love with the dream woman. A friend likened it to something from a cheap porno. The setup of the scene felt like a parody, it's astonishingly contrived and looks hilarious. There's a similarly cheap and tacky scene where Edward's playing piano which would seem completely at home in an advert for chocolates. Then there's the sparkles. I don't know what kind of brain fart writer Stephenie Meyer had when she thought that undead blood drinkers should sparkle, it makes about as much sense as zombies laying chocolate eggs. "This is the skin of a killer!" Edward exclaims. No, that's the skin of Tinkerbell. Which begs the question, does a vampire's reflection look like an adorable little kitten in Twilight's world?

Robert Pattinson gives one of the worst performances I've seen in a long time. Putting away his delivery of the dialogue, his entire act is based around one look, all he ever seems to do is pout and look up from under his heavy brow. It's a performance worthy of Derek Zoolander, I couldn't watch a single scene with Pattinson without thinking Blue Steel, it's uncanny.

It's an absolutely terrible movie, but I can't say I didn't enjoy it just for how bad it was, it could almost fall under the "So bad it's good" category. If we stop to think of the unintentional subtext in the story, it becomes even more ridiculous. Strip away the vampiric trimmings, and the story is about a girl being submissive to a stalker who follows her and watches her sleep. I'm in awe of how such a terrible story has garnered such a following, something so shallow and poorly made that has become so successful I can only liken to a company finding a way to market bottles of air. It's not as if either of the leads can act, nor is there much in the way of plot, but seeing all the merchandising surrounding Twilight it seems the appeal could be more like a brand that's encapsulated the young fans more so than anything else?

I really can't wait for the inevitable Stiller parody though.

I'm not coming down until they stop screaming!