Giving Thanks for Twilight

As an official start to the Thanksgiving weekend, I finally saw Twilight. It's not like I didn't try to see it the day it opened.How could I not? I live in a city of 40,000 people, in a county of about 150,000 and, since the theater was showing Twilight on two screens, I just didn't think that there were THAT many teenage girls who would be flocking to see the movie on opening day that I needed to do anything like pre-buy my ticket through Fandango. I should have recognized my mistake as I walked toward the theater, overhearing snippets of frantic conversations like "We're going to the 7:30 show!" and "Darla saw it at 5:00!" So I was only a little surprised and majorly disappointed to find out that both screens were sold out until the 11 PM show. Strangely, I underestimated the cultural phenomenon that the Twilight series has become.

By yesterday the crowds had thinned out a bit, but the audience was still primarily female, still mostly under 18.

Of course I liked the movie. There are no vampire movies I don't like, given my fascination - okay, my obsession - with the genre. Fans of the book - and I number among them - certainly wouldn't find fault with how accurately Stephanie Meyer's world has been brought to the screen. I've thought a lot about what I wanted to say about Twilight over the past few hours, and none of it is negative, except that I, as have many of the reviews I've read in the past week, really don't understand why, with all the special effects available to the filmmakers, they choose make up, especially for Peter Facinelli's Carlisle, that looked so obviously like a bad Halloween vampire costume (take it from someone who tried - and failed - to get that same pallor for my own vampire costume this Halloween. I probably looked less obviously made up than Facinelli did. And what was with that blonde hair?)

Niggling critiques aside, Twilight was, well, exactly what it needed to be. It wasn't a great film because vampire movies don't have to be great films. It was rife with undertones ( I'm still trying to find a review that mentions that scene in the chem lab with the wings behind Edward's head implying Bella's perception of his angelic beauty) because throughout their 75+ year history, vampire films have always had some social subtext. It was distinctive, because of the unique mythology that Stephanie Meyer created in her books to enhance existing vampire lore. That being said, it was the number one box office movie of its opening weekend, the fourth top November weekend opener of all time, and is, after just its opening weekend, the fifth largest grossing vampire movie (according to www.boxofficemojo.com) in 30 years.

Reviews of Twilight have been mixed. Nothing unusual there. Reviews of horror film in general, and vampire movies specifically, have always ranged from raves to pans. But box office numbers don't lie when it comes to determining the commercial success of any movie. All of which raises the question, which I'll address in my next post: When it comes to vampire movies, does what the critics say really matter?