![Teething [2007]](http://ambival.net/images/teething.jpg)
![Karma Shot [2008]](http://ambival.net/images/karmashot.jpg)
![Twilight [2008]](http://homepage.mac.com/shoat/movies/t/twilight.jpg)
Where to begin on this but exactly where I imagined/feared I’d begin prior to seeing it. Simply, do yourselves a favour and if you must see this, you must see Let the Right One In first – it’s like as imperative as seeing [Rec] before Quarantine. Even if you’re a young teenager, this is my advice and just about all I ultimately have to say about Twilight, which I frankly found even more of a joke than I ever could have imagined … it coming from one of my favourite directors Catherine Hardwicke, I’d honestly thought I’d be pleasantly surprised.
But this isn’t just a lesser vampire movie than that Swedish masterpiece. I find it honestly painful to think of anything it is. I struggle to imagine how it is in book form, so devoid is it of any kind of event. A vampire rescues a girl from an out of control car outside school, it takes her an hour screen time to figure out what he is, and for the last 50 minutes they run around looking moody like an Evanescence video. Though it entirely looks as pretty as a Catherine Hardwicke movie, I’m glad to hear she’s not going to waste her time on the sequels. This lacks any of the teen commentary of Thirteen, all the adolescent rush of Lords of Dogtown, and the ethereal (may I say supernatural?) sense of The Nativity Story. It’s literally just two hours of teen angst in the worst, and most passive way. It saddens me beyond words that this is the new height of teen culture. Thank God for HSM3, there’s no wonder they need that too.
) hoping to find some kind of outraged mention of “the crotch shot” that genuinely took even me aback here, only to discover that in fact what you see appear to be scarred genitals indicating that the (cute! cute!) Eli might, as in the novel, be a boy afterall – there are vague exchanges here and there about “her” gender. What it comes down to in the end, I think, is after 200 years, does it really matter? And y’know what? This makes it an even more beautiful love story to me.
![[Rec]](http://ambival.net/movies/rec.jpg){kind=link}