New Moon

Vampires. Werewolves. Forbidden love. Robert Pattinson. It should work.

My name is Lavendar and I am a Twilight fan.

Last night I gathered with several hundred fellow cult members to watch the eagerly awaited second filmgasm of the franchise.

New Moon.

My hopes for this film were not high. They were stratospheric. But as gravity or sod's law dictates, such high hopes have only one place to go. Down.

As my hopes fell, my temper rose.

WTF was Chris Weitz thinking?! Did he not go to film school? What is the holy grail of Film-making 101 people?

Show. Don't Tell.

So what did he and the scriptwriters do?

Tell, tell, tell. Long, turgid dialogue used repeatedly to set the exposition which was unexcusable and lazy. This was matched with poor pacing, as if each script page was written on A3 resulting in interminable scenes which desperately needed editing.

Whilst the production budget was clearly higher on this film (Edward's skin was much sparklier), it feels as if it all went into the action sequences; the only parts of the film I think Weitz was genuinely invested in. Weitz failed to invest in the creation of a dramatic narrative tension and as a result the film lacked atmosphere, nuance and longing. The only longing evident was my own for the film to end.

Chris: Now Kristen, I want you to say your sixty lines of dialogue as slowly as possible so we can make the scene really long for no good reason.

Sat amongst rabid Twilighters who were devouring every flickering second onscreen, the film cinema last night was a lonely place. Locked in my own hellish disappointment, I compared New Moon to Twilight as such. If Twilight was Gone with the Wind on film, then New Moon felt like Days of our Lives on TV.

It's not that I thought Catherine Hardwicke's Twilight was a filmic masterpiece but it was a damn sight better than New Moon. It was sexy and edgy and had a great score and was well cut. With Hardwicke you also felt that she lived and breathed the film; the characters and their emotions. With Weitz, it felt that it was just another job with a few cool action set pieces for him to play with.

To add to my devastation, I found myself agreeing with the film critic from the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail for godssakes!

My downfall is complete. Come get me Twilighters. Kill me now.