Ah, New Moon, the new film in the Twilight “saga“. That swollen, infected canker of a book series has leapt onto the silver screen a second time, and as before I was there to gleefully witness the train wreck. I usually don’t go see movies their opening weekend, much less opening day, simply to avoid the opening week rush and a movie that’s bound to rake in as many yowling fan girls as this one? Hell no, I won’t go. A movie has to be something I’m really looking forward to for me to brave large crowds so early in it’s theatrical run, much less it‘s opening weekend. In this case however, I made an exception. I made an exception because my God Damn girlfriend wanted to see it with me. But I was willing to make that sacrifice because that’s just the kind of guy I am.

I’m not really sure where to begin with this film, because what can I say that hasn’t already been said? Critics far smarter and funnier than I am have already taken this film apart and then shoved the pieces down the fangirls’ throats to choke on like we were made to choke. I guess you could say that I’m chewing on the carcass of an animal that’s already been brought down by far superior predators, but God Damn it if there’s so much as a scrap of gristle left on this thing I’m going to take it off and chew the hell out of it. As I’ve already said the entire Twilight series is piss poor romance, for reasons that have been gone over again and again Edward and Bella are both caught in a relationship that at it’s very best is unhealthy as all hell and frankly borders on mental and emotional abuse. Both of them manipulate the hell out of each other and the people around them (Bella mostly manipulates the other kids in her school as Edward is to good to interact with mere mortals.) “You are my life now?” They had been seeing each other for what, a week at that point? Yeah, no pressure Bella.

Twilight fails at being a romance series, because there’s nothing romantic about it. Bella and Edward lust after each other, caught up in their own personal passions and hungers, and I assume that the relationships of the other Cullens are equally twisted, but seeing as how the secondary characters are even less defined than the primary ones I‘m not really sure. Now, this actually could have made for an interesting series if it was acknowledged how warped this love is, or even a amusing critique of the obnoxious supernatural romance genera that has popped up in the last decade or so, but no. We’re meant to believe that this is a pure, true love. That this relationship is somehow healthy and mutually rewarding. I don’t know if Stephanie Meyer has thought this through, if she has really and truly understands the implications of her own writing, I’m betting she doesn’t. This woman can not think that such a relationship would be healthy, I refuse to believe she is that insane.

So what more is there to say, when the entire notion that this movie is built off of is a farce? A flimsy illusion? This isn’t romance any more than The Godfather is a horror film. It’s…nothing really. I’ll elaborate on that latter. But when the entire point of the story, this true, unrequited love between Bella and Edward has not just been poorly written, but so poorly written that it does the exact opposite of what it’s intentions were? It’s like building a house without first laying a foundation, the entire thing is going to crumble like wet cardboard.

This is why the story sucks, the foundation was flimsy to begin with. It was not just poorly built, but built in every way you should not build a foundation. It’s like holding a gun backwards and then being surprised when you shoot yourself in the chest.

But surely, there most be some redeeming quality in this film right? I mean, Transformers 2’s story was almost as poorly written as New Moon‘s, but it had explosions and Megan Fox dry humping a motorcycle in short shorts and Optimus Prime saying “Give me your face!”. Surely, it must have some kernel of entertainment value? The answer is no, it really doesn’t. It wasn’t even amusing in a “Ha! He sparkles!” kind of way as the first one was. I admit that I found the first Twilight funny, sure it was even worse than this film in certain aspects (namely the directing and production values) but there were moments of such hilarity that I can honestly say that it was worth seeing at least once. With this one…I don’t know if it actually wasn’t as funny as the first one or maybe the series’ entertainment value has run out but either way, it’s stopped being funny. Twilight even had Kristen Stewart, and actress who I find attractive, in her underwear so again, that wasn’t a complete loss. Not this time around, oh no, we didn’t even get a side boob. This film series has Ashley Greene in it, need I say more? If a movie doesn’t have a good storyline, that’s fine, I’m not going to say it was good, but give me some gore, hot chicks or a explosion or two, and I am willing to forgive that fact, I am not a difficult person to please. Not going to give it 10/10 stars but hell, I won’t say it was a complete waste of time.

When you have Ashley Greene, Kristen Stewart, and vampire eating werewolves as big as fricking horses (Oh, I’m going to get to the werewolves, don’t you worry) and you screw up all of these things? That puts this film on the same level as the kind of grotesque vomit cranked out by The Asylum, and even they have made a film more entertaining than this one. That’s right folks, Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus is better than another movie. Any movie. That’s bad guys, that’s really bad. However Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus is a film that is not only bad, it embraces it’s own awful nature and even better it doesn’t waste your time. It has stuff like a gigantic shark leaping up into the clouds and then biting a plane out the sky, tentacles leap hundreds of feat out of the air to whip jet planes into oblivion, it even has a half decent fight scene at the end of the movie. Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus did what it was intended to do and that was entertain and make a quick buck while it was doing it and God Damn it it’s found a cult following, a cult following that truly understands what that film is and embraces every cheesy second of it, rather than making excuses for how awful it is.

Let me say again, for emphasis, The Asylum Pictures, a production company responsible for trash like “King of the Lost World”, “Alien vs. Hunter”, and “Snakes on a Train” made a film that’s more entertaining than a multi million dollar event film based on a book series that’s pretty much a cultural phenomena that’s as virulent as the unholy spawn of Ebola and the common cold.

The werewolves just looked bad. They were brought to life with cheap cgi and given no personalities They look like wolves in the sense that they’re canines to a degree, they lack any sense of power or majesty which they are described as having in the books. These CGI blobs don’t manage to match real wolves in ferocity even though they should surpass it seeing as how they’re much larger and far more aggressive than any real wolf ever would be. Even more grating, the werewolves were created by Tippit Studios, the same guys who created the CGI dinos for Jurassic Park. The animation isn’t as bad as I first thought it would be, though. I’ll admit that there are shots were the werewolves do actually feel like they have some weight and motion to them, but most of the time they tend to bounce around like they‘re nothing more than balloons filled with helium. There’s no aggression, no sense that these creatures are at all dangerous. They have no weight to them and that breaks the illusion that these creatures exist even more than the cartoonish CGI does

They’re poorly defined characters that I don’t care about that transform into poorly designed, poorly rendered CGI blobs that I don’t care about either. They’re no better than the werewolves in Cursed in my opinion, at least the wolf in Cursed was being played by a man in a suit who actually knew what he was doing and actually cared about the character, no matter how poorly written it was. At least the werewolf in Cursed actually looked like what it was meant to be. It served it’s purpose, and whether or not you liked it’s purpose is neither here nor there.

Can we even justify calling this film a werewolf movie? There are werewolves in it to be sure, but at the end of the day it’s not about the werewolves, or Jacob the “lovable, down to earth“ pedowolf, it’s not even about vampires. It’s about Bella freaking out that her walking dead cradle robbing ex boyfriend abandoned her to wither and fade in the mundane mortal world and jumping ship to the closest thing to an alpha male who will take her pale, whiney ass. It’s about a girl who needs a man in her life to function, or else she’ll just fall apart and rot for a few months. And these people call me pathetic for not liking this franchise? Please, spare me the offended fangirl caterwauling.

There is no excuse for this movie. None. It is a black hole of entertainment. That’s all that I can say, the poor characters, the poor storyline, the poor acting (Which is something else that astonishes me as well, that Michael Sheen, Christopher What’s-His-Face from Sanctuary, even Robert Pattinson, all great actors who give possibly some of the worst performances of their career in this film), the poor directing, the total lack of funny moments, those God Damn werewolves. I repeat, this is a black hole of entertainment. I will say that it’s not utterly heinous and completely vile, borderline offensive in it’s cr@ppiness as the “Movie Movies” series is, or a film made by Uwe Boll.

It just…there. Taking up space, absorbing money. It exists for the sole reason to line the pockets of Stephanie Meyer and the pricks who green lit it, and so it’s fans can nod sagely and smile smugly while it bloats on our dollar like a tick. Ironically it acts more like a vampire than Edward Cullen does. While I hate to quote another reviewer, The Spoony One is right. This movie is nothing more than smut with an unusually high budget. It’s God Damn PG13 pornography, I swear. It’s not even particularly great porn so at the end of the day it doesn’t even do that job well. Someone once described the Twilight vampires as sparkling bricks. That’s what this movie is, it’s a gigantic lump. A fat deposit on the neck of cinema. A big ole pile of shattered cement in the middle of the road. At the end of the day I don’t even hate this movie, I just don‘t care about it. It’s a waste of effort, a waste of money, and a waste of celluloid.

It’s a big, sparkly brick.

In so many ways, this film is the perfect adaptation of Twilight, because it’s an extension of everything wrong with the series. One tiny cog in the vast machine of the Twilight franchise. One lone Zergling in the vast horde. KEKEKEKEKE! Another organ in the body, another few million dollars for Smeyer. Joy. I’m tired of it. Tired of hearing about it. Tired of making fun of it. Tired of deconstructing it. And I’m really tired of arguing about it. Writing this review depresses me, because it forces me to take a good hard look at Twilight, at the state of the werewolf fandom, at the state of vampire fandom. At the state of storytelling itself, and what I see is not good.

Porn is porn, let it stay porn, don’t try to delude yourself that it’s of any value other than self gratification. New Moon wasn’t high art, it was smut, smut that appeals to a certain demographic. Nothing less, nothing more.