Twilight Coven Philippines

Charlene's Twilight Movie Review

One thing that captivated me about the Twilight novel was its rapt plot, flow and character development; the personas balance out each other as the plot unfolds. And so I went into the theater on the 26th of November eager to see that magic translated onto the big screen.

The movie was decent, but it failed to capture and satisfy me as the novel did. Half of the niceties that were expected to be included were missing. It had strong points, though. The cinematography was great; Hardwicke was able to capture the atmosphere of rainy forks. The dark vampiric aura was also captured well. I also loved the flashback clips that were inserted in some scenes. The lead actors were convincing; Rob Pattinson blew me away with his powerful performance of a brooding vampire who falls in love for the first time, although the “dazzle factor” was not as evident as I expected it to be; Kristen Stewart was the perfect klutzy Bella. What surprised me, though, are the minor characters that made the movie more amusing.

But in Hardwicke’s effort to compress a 500+ page novel into her two-hour film, she had made the movie’s pace too fast—scenes jumped from one to the other, seemingly unrelated scenes were squeezed into one, unimportant dialogues were added—that some parts failed to impact the audience and show the development of Edward and Bella’s relationship; so much so that even the cheesy lines that we have loved from the book were poorly delivered because of the excessive modification of major scenes. The actors were not able to build up their characters for a proper climax. Everything felt rushed. It was a bit disappointing that the Cullens were not given that much exposure in the movie too. It would have been good if they also showed how they became what they are. I came out of the cinema demanding for MORE; if I felt that way, how much more for the confused non-readers of the book? Because of its lack of details and hasty narration, the movie fell short in providing proper explanations to them.

Overall, it was enjoyable, but it lacked qualities that were present in the book. But considering that it is only the first of the four books, and even having only a meager budget, it was still forgivable. I do hope that New Moon would come out better.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10 Apples