Jonathan Melville: Turning out the lights on Twilight

TOMORROW sees the release of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part II, the fifth and final film in the series which took the world’s obsession with vampires to new heights while the rest of us wondered what the fuss was about.

Before I go any further with my bashing of the Twilight films, I have a confession to make; I haven’t watched one, at least not all the way through.

Until recently I’d avoided Twilight, not being in the right demographic (I’m neither female nor a teenager) for either the movie or Stephanie Meyer’s novels. Having heard bad things, I decided life was too short to pay good money to watch some adult actors pretending to be high school kids.

Writing a film column often means having to cast aside personal taste for the sake of keeping abreast of popular culture, but sometimes I have to draw the line. Twinkling vampires was the last straw.

Things changed recently when I was asked to interview two of the film’s cast members, Nikki Reed (Rosalie) and Kellan Lutz (Emmet), while they were in Scotland. Knowing I had to sound relatively knowledgable, I bought the first film for £1 and sat down to enjoy it.

I only lasted 45 minutes of workmanlike direction, flat dialogue and half-hearted acting before I gave up, heading to Wikipedia for a summary of the sequels.

While Reed and Lutz were nice people, talking of their love for the films and their fans, sadly I’m not one of them and I won’t be watching Breaking Dawn II this weekend.

Instead, I’m looking forward to the recently announced release of 1958’s Dracula on Blu-ray in 2013, Christopher Lee being the only movie vampire with real bite.