In fact UK and Irish distributor Entertainment One announced that the fourth and penultimate film in the saga – BREAKING DAWN PART 1 – broke records this weekend as it recorded the biggest all time opening for an American film in the UK, grossing £13.9 million.

BREAKING DAWN PART 1 has set the record with £6.35 million as the biggest non-3D opening Friday figure of all time, eclipsing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, which grossed £5.9 million. Including 3D films, this Friday figure has charted as the 2nd highest ever.

This is a shot of a scene from a vampire movie apparently.

The film has become the biggest 2D opening of 2011, beating the previous record set by The Inbetweeners Movie which took £13.2 million over 5 days. BREAKING DAWN PART 1 has scored the biggest Twilight opening so far and the fifth biggest three day figure ever behind well established British franchises Harry Potter and James Bond.

So what does that say about the UK cinema audiences? What is the future for the vampire genre? And why is it that a horror film seems to only do well in the cinema if its not really horrible in any way at all?

A picture of the scariest vampire since Count Duckula

We want to hear what you have to say because we’re sure that it will be more intelligent, passionate and poignant than any of the dire dialogue spewed forth from the anemic anorexic and her fangless fashion doll of a love interest. It’s just a dragged-out, cash-in of a conversion which is feeding off the over stuffed teenage pockets like a grotesque money grabbing vampire leech, filling their fertile minds with unobtainable dreams and a hate of true horror.

Its over to you what do you think?

By the way here is the trailer just in case you need to get angry about this piece of crap all over again:

In an opening dream-sequence we see him running unprotected for cover on a scorching city street, his skin finally bursting into flames.

He and his single-parent mother Julia (Mar Sodupe) are forced by his condition to leave his not-much-loved life in the city and settle in a remote village in the shade of the mountains. But something nasty is living in the woods here, and making midnight snacks of the local cattle; immediately on arrival Santi finds himself witness to a brutal attack on a local boy.

All this seems connected with their arrival in the village and the past inhabitants of their new house, and Santi finds himself singled out by the suspicious locals while he is himself stalked by the real beast. As a sinister old man tells his mother, “This is not a good place to be alone”. But who ever listens to those creepy old guys?

Billed as coming from a producer of The Orphanage, this similarly-themed Spanish horror is aiming for the same commercial mystery-chiller market, though with more of a teenage, possibly Twilight-friendly audience.
Shiver is visually impressive and well handled by its cast, with Valverde (The Devil’s Backbone) very capable as the vulnerable, aloof hero. But early scenes seem to rush through with perfunctory character introductions, the result being that the film initially holds no great sense of threat, and never fully exploits the abilities of the cast.

The tension and intrigue start to pick up when a lost football is playfully returned to Santi by the otherwise blood-slurping creature, and later scenes where he confronts his new friend, although perhaps familiar to horror fans, still have a creepy power.

But this is a story which packs in too many genre elements without integrating them fully, and ultimately relies on characters running back into the woods to provide further peril, apparently never having listened to the warnings of sinister old men.

The nuts and bolts of the mystery are also often glaringly obvious: the complete back-story has been filed conveniently in a trunk in the loft, and otherwise the locals nuns have long known about this mess and are happy to chip in with a bit of exposition.

Shiver is a well-produced film, and diverting enough entertainment, but it’s doubtful whether it will reach the right kind of audience among more committed horror fans. Most of all it’s strange and quite disappointing that the most intriguing element – Santi’s clinical aversion to sunlight – turns out to be a red-herring only dramatically exploited in a couple of scenes, when it could have been a central and visceral element of the film’s suspense.

Movie Rating: ★★½☆☆ 

Trailer:

Admit it, you have to watch. Even if it’s only to share with your friends and complain about the ‘dis-service that Twilight has done to vampires everywhere’.

On the plus side, while everyone is being enchanted by these soft, loving, placid blood suckers, you can of course take comfort in the knowledge that somewhere there is a bunch of nasty ones just waiting to rip people’s throats out!

Enough talk, just watch and feel free to comment!

Things seemed promising. But as the years rolled on it became quickly apparent that this version of the vampire myth was not going to be the pervading format. True Blood emerged, Vampire Diaries limped pathetically into existence and Twilight happened, blandly and contently providing mass audiences with entertainment of pure mediocrity and suspect moral code. With the exception of Let the Right One In, the general menagerie of vampire based entertainment has been frustratingly substandard and completely forgettable, if largely popular.

But with the Twilight saga coming to a close and inoffensive yet plucky family fare like Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant failing to draw a substantial audience, the end seems imminent for this disappointing non-movement. And it is at this time that low budget monstrosities like Dead Cert and Life Blood attempt to make their mark in a dying and overcrowded market of high gloss studio-fare.

Initially, these movies seem to be one up on the competition, possessing quirkier plots than the mainstream would allow. Dead Cert pitches cockney gangsters against Romanian-vampire-mafia types who are making a play for their turf and channels the work of Guy Ritchie and Nick Love. Life Blood has an even stronger central conceit as it follows a lesbian couple who are lent vampiric super powers by making out with God – yes, you read right – and in exchange must hunt and kill the most sinful creatures amongst men. It nods slyly to the work of Russ Meyer, Herschel Gordon Lewis and, albeit misguidedly, Quentin Tarantino.

Where these films fall apart is in their execution, showing no flare or panache and sideswiping themselves with a total lack of ambition. Both suffer from sluggish and uninspired camera work, lazy plotting and a deaf ear to snappy one-liners – something that could easily turn a bad b-movie into a charming one. What is even stranger is that neither attempt to delve further into their proposed concepts. Dead Cert lazily coasts on its stick thin set-up and Life Blood careers off course entirely, blindsiding its original intentions and pulling itself from the delightful trappings of the chick revenge flick into dull, dialogue-heavy territory.

These are just a couple of examples of the underground failing to challenge the mainstream in any substantial manner. During the same release year of 30 Days of Night, Fist of the Vampire also failed to deliver on its sky high concept and played out like a bad home movie shot by drunk wrestlers and King Diamond fanatics. What upsets the most is that the blandness of Hollywood cinema should have galvanized indie filmmakers into creating inventive and intuitive cinema; the kind that reacts to the unfulfilled needs of an overlooked audience jaded by more popular franchises, films and general entertainment. But it failed to do so.

Ultimately, this has been an exciting trend mostly gone to waste and its potential rewards have been squandered, forgotten, or ignored altogether. In the surprisingly wise words of two idiots ‘Vampires suck!’

Dead Cert trailer:

Life Blood trailer:

What you are about to read is an extended review of the first Twilight film, or, what I affectionately like to call, Jonesy the Cat’s Analytical Rape of Twilight the Movie and Beyond.

Translating Twilight from page to screen was always going to be a tricky operation. The book functions by way of audience projection, the characters so blank, bland and without purpose that it allows the reader to place their own personalities onto them.
What this essentially means is that Twilight is Dungeons and Dragons for emo kids, a slice of role-playing literature that appeals to the hearts of the awkward and the lonely, or in other words, teenagers.
The imperative danger of creating a cinematic adaptation is in changing what fundamentally works about the book. No longer will Edward Cullen and Bella Swan be blank vessels that you can pilot, now they will be given faces, faces alien to yours.
In an obvious but undeniably lucrative move by the studio, the roles were filled by the infuriatingly attractive Robert Pattinson and Kirsten Stewart. The clever part of this being, an audience doesn’t care if you tamper with the characters as long as they look pretty as a result of it.

Legions of wailing fans have bleated out the many ways in which they would like to physically ravage the lead actors. This is, however, a hilarious irony considering the movie’s obvious and offensive abstinence moral.
Edward is ferociously attracted to Bella. The smell of her blood intoxicates him making it impossible to resist her wooden charms (though you would never guess considering the actors complete lack of sexual tension). However he will not bite her until they are married as the action will transform her into one of his vampiric brood.
The metaphor here is stick thin, embarrassing and bizarre. To strip it down to its bare bones is comically revealing; Edward will not EXCHANGE FLUIDS with Bella BEFORE MARRIAGE as it will FUNDEMENTALLY CHANGE her when it does. There you go kiddies, as if being a teenager isn’t confusing, frustrating and hard enough, now you are supposed to feel guilty about your base, animal urges.
Let me clarify (as if I needed to), sex is a completely natural thing for two people of consenting age to engage in, to demonize in the way Twilight does is not only stupid but reductive. But remember, stay safe…

Beyond the thinly veiled abstinence text, the film also offends due to an abundance of waist high plot holes.
To illuminate but one of these is nothing short of hilarious.
Early on, it is established that the local Native American community are aware that the Cullen family are vampires. To protect the interests of both parties, none of which are made particularly clear, a deal is struck in which the Native Americans agree to withhold the Cullen’s true identities from the general public. In exchange the immortal blood suckers must never feast upon human prey.
Years later Bella saunters onto the Native American preserve and jollies around their gift shop in search of anything that might help her to understand Edward’s strange behaviour. What she comes across is frankly perplexing… a book… a book that reveals everything about the vampire mythos and, subsequently, how to spot a vampire… The werewolf/Native American community have gone through the effort of researching, writing, publishing and selling a book that teaches you, in an indirect but never the less incriminating manner, how to spot a vampire.
Now I don’t know about you, but it seems like breaking the deal to me. It’s a clear, stiff and fervent middle finger directed straight at the Cullen family.
Incidentally, this could have been a very interesting plot point and note of contention between the opposing groups. Oddly, however, this is never spoken of again and therefore serves the sole purpose of exposition, to teach Bella and the audience about the rules of Twilight’s inconsistent and clumsy universe. This, is, very, bad, writing.

I could carry on, I could talk about the monotonous monochrome colour palette, I could talk about the fact that when Edward sprints he looks like the Road Runner. And I could talk about everything and nothing but at this point I would just be spewing vitriolic bile for the sake of my own bloated sense of self purpose.
I have intended this review to be not only a deconstruction of the movie itself, but a general deconstruction of what makes the Twilight Saga so horrible and ridiculous.

I’m not attacking the fans and by God I would never judge someone for taking enjoyment from this franchise. But I just cannot take this crap lying down any more.
Twilight is petty, stupid, boring, comical and petulant. It’s the worst cultural phenomenon since Big Brother and more abrasive to boot. But you know what, I honestly would not care one iota about Twilight’s astronomical popularity if it wasn’t for the offensive, underpinning message of it all.
At the end of the day Twilight is a weird, abhorrent meta-narrative that teaches people to fear sex and to remain with a violent, blood-sucking partner so long as you love them. Genuinely sickening stuff.

Movie Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆ 

You can buy it with Free Delivery from:

P.S. I couldn’t find an official trailer that had Embedding enabled, so I had to settle for one that ended with a couple of vacant mouth breathers spouting nothing about nothing… Enjoy:

Additional film information: Twighlight (2008)