Call me an idiot. I should have read the reviews or at least, my heart should have sunken low when I found out that Catherine Hardwicke was meant to direct this one... but when it comes to pointing out the source of all evil, I believed Meyers should have been the culprit and gave the Twilight director one more chance. Alas! I've been duped, the Twilight effect is an ever growing virus that eats at the core of everything it touches, tainting a director forever with the love of unexplainable out of the blue closeups of angsty revelry, and the box office poison that is filming on a closed, second rate set.
Taking in consideration that I am still under a feverish Nyquil Spell, I'll try to put it up in words and make some sense of it.
The one positive aspect- and I'm using the word positive for lack of another- is that each frame of this movie seems to be a love letter to Amanda Seyfried. She is beautiful, sweet innocent with a tinge of wild and it makes it all so much more painful to watch, that a character could have so much potential and yet when push comes to shove what should have been quite an interesting journey of self discovery turns into just another teen movie. She had the chops to make this movie dangerous, thrilling, a bit sexy and a lot scarier, like a good fairy tale should be. Instead she was given a script that called for lip pouting and sighs and a strange little medieval dance that looked like a night of clubing at Ybor City.
Thrown into the maelstrom of too many plot lines too little time, way too many stale shots is Max Irons- son of Jeremy-God Bless him. He is handsome and undoubtedly talented, he did what he could with the lines given and made the best about an "antagonist" that turned out to be quite likable, because he is the nicest guy you will ever meet. It is expected, in the honorable world of squeaky clean teen romance whenever Bella is in danger Edward and Jacob will team up and... oh, hold on that's another movie... is it?
The Glory that is Gary Oldman- strapped off cash -decided to sign for this glorious project. This is a man who obviously discerns Ham from Hamlet played his character accordingly. He delivered his lines bombastically and didn't seem to mind the hens that perched silently and content on top of balconies during a fierce snow storm... because even poultry will face the weather to learn off the Inquisitor what they need most... expository dialogue on werewolves.
Talking about hens in snow storms, cinematography was a pain, the opening shots were promising with beautiful dark green woods surrounded by rolling fog and dark edges and turns. However, the first five minutes give into closed sets that scream heavy plastic/ foam moldings that set the tone towards a crappy pixelated werewolf . Since the concept was wolf supersized they should have borrowed one of Eclipse's angry puppies or shot a real gray wolf in scale. It was distracting ugly to watch and not scary in the least. For some reason the woods were intertwined with giant -over 5 feet in lenght- spikes of what seemed to be ashwood. It's a shame this story deals with werewolves and not vampires otherwise they would have been pushed into a tree and taken out of their misery in a snap.
I would continue and build upon a nice comparison against the best interpretation of this particular story to ever grace film, but I'm too sick to continue so I'll say... The Company of Wolves this ain't.
The Quote: At a given time Peter (Shiloh Fernandez) tells Red "We can't be together, I'm a danger to you" and it's giving me an ulcer to confess that Edward's stupid lamb and lion speech had way more resonance...
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