Let’s be realistic.  This franchise achieves its popularity by appealing to the libidos of young to youngish females and cougars.  Of course I can’t judge them too harshly.  I’ve had several conversations with men whose major reason for liking the Transformers franchise is Megan Fox.  It’s as if people are willing to sit through an entire film, just to watch an attractive person be attractive.  Let me not mince my words.  That is not enough to make a good movie.  The most compelling thing these characters do is look attractive.  Beyond that, there’s very little to appreciate in New Moon.

The only good thing to say about the film is that it looks polished.  The movie was assembled into a body of work that looks like it was intended for wide release.

But even that aspect is riddled with flaws.  Judging from the way the movie is shot, it can’t decide whether it’s trying to be a music video or a commercial for jeans.  I didn’t mind this so much because it gives the audience a break from camera angles that are far too intimate.  Often times the camera shots  feature one character on screen and place the crown of that character’s head directly at the top of the frame and the character’s chin at the bottom.  Even during the few fight scenes the camera is placed equally as close on two characters that are ripping into each other.  The extreme motion featured in these shots make the image indiscernible from blurs with eyeballs.  It seems like they took the lazy route in the scene so that they didn’t have to choreograph the fight.

When I saw the first movie I dismissed the actors as being awful.  Then I saw Kristen Stewart in Adventuresland among other movies.  She has talent.  So I have to conclude that she’s not taking the material seriously.  Who can blamer her?  There’s no way to deliver the dialogue with a completely straight face.  Most of it is stereotyped and extremely overdramatic.  On occasion there’s a funny line that was intended to be funny, but mostly it’s funny unintentionally.  No character is rounded enough to have interesting dialogue.  In fact, the best lines and delivery comes from the secondary character Jessica (Anna Kendrick).

The film is way too long.  It is two hours and ten minutes.  The story doesn’t really begin until an hour into the film.  I’m not saying that the final hour and ten minutes don’t need a set up, but it could have been condensed into ten minutes.  I have to conclude that the writer thinks the plot points are people staring broodingly/listlessly into each other’s eyes.  There’s only one significant event that happened in the first hour.  Edward decides to leave Bella and his family because he loves her too much.  Again we see a stereotype, but it’s used a little differently in New Moon.  It doesn’t make sense.  Now that Bella has been introduced into the monster world, Edward should know that Bella would be in danger without protection. 

Edward refuses to turn Bella into a vampire for two good reasons.  Doing so would break the treaty with the werewolves, and it would also make Bella lose her soul.  Apparently it’s very difficult to kill a vampire, so what does it matter?  If she’s a vampire she will be immortal, and should learn to stay away from werewolves.  Treaty or no treaty, as long as she’s careful she will have a greater chance at survival and attaining her stereotypically broody sense of happiness.  It all leads to an attempted social message.  Despite it’s obviousness I wasn’t aware of it until Captain Logan pointed it out to me.  Edward refuses to turn Bella into a vampire until she marries him.  The bite of a vampire is symbolic of the act of sex, and has been hypersexualized in vampire films previous to this one.  So the big social message is that kids should wait until marriage to have sex/vampirism.  I suppose I should applaud the film for attempting to weave in a message, but the movie is so silly that it becomes a parody of what it was intended to be.  Even the message was stereotyped.  Therefore it could be said that it almost mocks its own message.

The Verdict:  There are more problems than what I’ve outlined in this review, but for the sake of economy and sanity, I’ll let it end here.  I give Twilight Saga: New Moon a 0.5 out of 5.  There is very little that redeems this film.  The only enjoyment that can be pulled from it is that it’s easy to make fun of, and that it’s unintentionally funny.  I recommend only seeing the film if you have a private viewing with your wittiest friends who will riff on it throughout.

-Vince

I entered the theater with hopes about as low as the devil’s hooves.  Judging from the advertising campaign, I assumed the movie was desperately trying to sell something that was less than it claimed to be.  So that being said, I enjoyed the movie.

The characters were good people, which is a rarity in modern cinema.  The movie collectively takes time to make the people kind and considerate.  By virtue of that aspect, I enjoyed the film.  I found it refreshing.  The incredible acts of selflessness provide an escape in these times of turmoil.  However, the movie tries too hard to make the characters “nice.”  It gets a little sickening.  It doesn’t seem real, but, then again, we live in a society that’s more than ready to claim dysfunction in any social arrangement.  The dysfunction is added into the movie via the father of the family Peter Campbell (Martin Donovan).  He’s a recovered drunk and liar.  This feeds the theme of the movie, but doesn’t add to the plot.  Theme aside, the father subplot was mostly useless.  He spends a little time deciding whether or not to drink.  Then the inevitable happens with remarkably slight result.

The theme is very obviously the power and potential of redemption.  Religion even plays a strong role.  The characters, both living and dead, have a chance to redeem themselves.  I can’t say much more because it because it would ruin the most enjoyable aspects of the movie.

The style of the movie is a cross between The Ammityville Horror and The Exorcist.  Some not too subtle references are made with the composition of the shots used.  The house was very close to the one in Ammityville, and the use of Reverend Popescu (Elias Koteas) is directly from The Exorcist.

The scares featured are a mix of creative and stereotyped.  It toys with your mind a little, but mostly it relies on the scares that you’ve seen in every horror film: a person who isn’t there/reflections/shadows/etc.  The creativity may not be “well worth the wait.”  But it was paced adequately.

The plot was ultimately unimpressive.  It was formulaic, and predictable.  For a horror movie that relies so heavily on making the audience jump, the director Peter Cornwell doesn’t really try to surprise the audience with the script’s formulaic misdirection efforts.  The formula only works if the surprise is effective.

Some of the dialogue was stale.  Under the stress from her teenage son’s cancer, Sara Campbell (Virginia Madsen) says “Please God don’t take my, baby,” or something to that effect.  When a person’s child is dying, they can’t help, but say corny lines.  Those lines don’t need to be in the movie.  They only serve to tell the audience what we already know.

Possibly unintentional, but still interesting was the small parallel drawn between experimental science, and religion.  The boy with cancer Matt Campbell (Kyle Gallner) is chosen for an experimental treatment at the same time that he starts experiencing the haunting.  It was used mainly as a plot device, but the correlation is interesting none the less.

Lastly I feel I should mention Reverend Popescu (Elias Koteas)  I was completely unaware that Koteas would be in the movie, and he plays a significant role.  Looking as his imdb page shows that he has far from fallen off the movie industry radar.  Regardless, it’s a treat to see him acting in anything.  Whether it’s The Prophecy or Ninja Turtles 3. 

The Verdict:  It may not be the best movie, or even the most creative.  The main attraction of the film is its human qualities in the midst of the supernatural.  It’s a movie that poses a strong argument for the strength of man kind in the face of human corruption.  So, whether you choose to think of it as escapist fiction, or a realistic positive message, the movie provides a sense of hope in a time that people might need it.  My recommendation is to see the film.