I’d come up with a great simile or metaphor there, but I think Twilight gave me brain damage. I think if I had spent two hours huffing paint thinner in the freezing cold parking lot of the movie theater, I would have been better off. My head would hurt less, and I wouldn’t want to burn down the closest library. Everyone says the books are great, but anything would be better than this movie. Of course, the two fall instantly and hopelessly in love. Bella because Edward is so sparkly and dangerous, and Edward because Bella reminds him of heroin. Meanwhile, there have been some unexplained animal attacks in town that are actually vampire killings, and this means that Bella is going to be in a mild level of peril at some point thanks to her association with the man-leech Cullen family.   This movie has so many faults on a basic level that I don’t even know where to begin. Let’s start with the acting, then work our way down the list of terrible things about the film. Kristen Stewart, who looks like Jodie Foster’s daughter without Jodie Foster’s acting ability, has two facial expressions: confused and confused angry. Robert Pattinson at least tries to deliver his lines with some conviction, but he doesn’t have a lot to work with. Fortunately for him, he was just hired to look pretty and be angsty. Unfortunately for him, he’s also got a fight scene. Yes, I get that she’s the new girl in town and she’s supposed to be awkward around her new bloodthirsty friends, but every. Single. Line. Has. Too. Much. Hesitation. Teenagers are awkward, but nobody is this constantly awkward in real life. This is a fetishistic level of discomfort. Masochists don’t enjoy being uncomfortable this much. The script, by veteran TV producer/writer Melissa Rosenberg, is chock full of some of the most groan-inducing, trite dialog I’ve ever heard outside of such great films as Ice Spiders and Dinocroc. This is a bad TV soap opera, except entirely too predictable and unintentionally funny. This movie deserves the Mystery Science Theater 3000/Rifftrax treatment; when my bad joke line turns out to be the next line that comes out of the actor’s mouth (verbatim AND with the same delivery), that’s probably not good. Hardwicke manages to transform what should have been the best part of the movie, a fight scene between two preternatural monsters, into the weakest part of the movie, thanks to bad pacing, poor editing, and horrendous special effects. This is a movie that makes having magic powers look boring and makes super speed look impossibly lame. A fight to the death looks about as harrowing and suspenseful as a trip to Grandmother’s house for tea and a nap. The one thing the film does well is capture the gray and green overcast nature of the Pacific Northwest. You can easily see why Seattle has a very high suicide rate. The forest that serves as the setting for most of the film is very lovely, then the actors start doing things and ruin it. At least they only cast a few 20-something high school students for once.    If you’re a fan of the Twilight series, or if you’ve never seen any other romance movies in your life, you might like this film. This is unflavored cinema oatmeal; bland, predictable, and mushy. If you like being dragged from Point A to Point B by your ear without ever having to pay attention to the movie, this is the film for you. If you don’t care about actors working their craft or decent writing, have bad taste, love awful romance movies, or suffer from recent head trauma, then Twilight is the movie for you! US correspondent Ron Hogan is very well aware that vampires, as awesome machines of destruction, have been effectively emasculated by movies like this. Find more by Ron at his blog, Subtle Bluntness , and daily at Shaktronics and PopFi.