Dearly beloved reader, I’m afraid my fascination with the Edward Cullen/Twilight phenomenon is far from over, and I loved the following review so much that I felt compelled to share some of it with you.

Twilight, the flim, is actually … good?

By Darren Mercer

I could barely tear my eyes and ears away from it, a scene so awesome and terrifying. No, I’m not referring to the film adaptation of the bestselling tetralogy, I’m describing the line of young tweens standing outside the Vogue Cinema last Friday at 6:20pm, anxiously awaiting the first showing of Twilight in Sackville.

Before I continue my review, I should admit something: I think the Twilight series is an artistic cesspool and an abomination to young adult literature. They are, in essence, fan fiction on a terrifyingly popular level.

Unsurprisingly, I had little intention to see the movie myself, until a group of friends convinced me to attend. My response to their invitation included three phases: abject horror, followed by morbid curiosity, and finally tentative acceptance. I was delighted at the prospect of witnessing this film, which would surely be such a feat of epic horror.

I was sadly disappointed, and am forced to admit here that Twilight is actually a very decent film. Stephenie Meyer’s story is one of those rare few that survive a translation to a new medium and, indeed, show remarkable improvements.

(…)

There are times when the cheesiness of the movie will make you sink into your seat, embarrassed to realize that you are actually watching this film. Luckily, considering the low quality of the source material, these are fewer and farer between than I would have ever expected, and after the first hour of the two hour film has passed, they are virtually non-existant.

Much of the reason Meyer’s story works as a screenplay, while failing as a novel, is due primarily to her writing style. The endless assortment of adjectives which represented the constituent parts of her terrible purple prose is notably absent in the movie. Many of the descriptions of her characters, as well as the thoughts of Bella, the 17-year-old protagonist who narrates the books in the first-person, were unable to be translated directly into screenplay lines for the actors to speak, and, due to this, were abandoned.

Read the rest of this review here.