The Ultimate Twilight Rundown, Part 3: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (2011) and Part 2 (2012)

What's scarier on Halloween than a slasher movie where a crazed lunatic tries to kill a group of teenagers? How about a movie that seems like it's trying to kill a whole genre?

This, I'm sorry to say, is THE ULTIMATE TWILIGHT RUNDOWN, PART 3 - 

The Ultimate Twilight Rundown, Part 2: New Moon (2009) and Eclipse (2010)

So it's fall here in the Pacific Northwest and the weather has changed. As one of my friends put it, Seattle currently has perfect "traipsing through the fog in a top hat and scarf, looking for Cockney prostitutes to vivisect" weather.

This creepy, Gothic feel actually makes me appreciate even more what Catherine Hardwicke did with the original Twilight movie. Which just makes these next films just so... so... so much worse.

The Ultimate Twilight Rundown, Part 1: Twilight (2008)

The success of Twilight really doesn't shock me. After all, in many ways, the formula is an old one.

Gothic literature of the 18th and 19th centuries was mostly read by female audiences, and the more popular and romantic examples included plots which featured vulnerable heroines (weeping, suffering, and fainting at the slightest shoe drop) who encountered supernatural elements and mysteries and who, after the defeat of some horrible foe, often ended up married to a wealthy lord (perhaps previously disguised). Common tropes of a Gothic novel included a mysterious and suspenseful tone, elements of the supernatural, omens or visions or prophesies, a lonely and suffering heroine, melodramatic reactions and emotions (especially those related to love or suffering), lovers parted, and often one lover's uncertainty about the reciprocalness of the other's love. While some of the most famous and memorable Gothic novels, like Frankenstein, deviated from the standard tropes, the Twilight series can actually be seen as a revival of a type.

But is that a good thing? And does that mean any of the films are actually worth watching? Well, grab your smelling salts and hold on tight: I watched all five movies so that you don't have to. 

This is the Great Twilight Run-Down - PART 1, the original Twilight movie.

The sparkles are coming...

If anyone is wondering why Fangtastic Films hasn't had a review in a while, that would be because I just finished a 1500 mile move from sunny Arizona to the much more vampire-friendly Washington state. It's been a lot of work and boxes are still being unpacked, but I thought I would take a moment to tell you all that a series of reviews are in the works. Namely, reviews of a film series, based on a book series, that is about a protagonist who meets vampires after moving from Phoenix, Arizona to Washington State.

Yes, I've referenced it and teased it before. And I've watched bad teen monster movie after bad teen monster movie, so I feel I'm a bit inoculated. Well... maybe. But either way, it's coming: The Ultimate Twilight Movie Rundown.

Yet another vampire Mean Girls reference... God help me.

Full disclosure, I've never read the Twilight novels. However, I know what I would consider "far too much" about them and have a sense of each book's plot because I work with teenagers and I feel it's important to know these things. Like being able to joke about Katy Perry lyrics. It's a bit of a curse.

So stay tuned, dust off your "Team Edward" and "Team Jacob" flags, and wish me luck. I think I'm going to need it.

~ LK

Review: The Wisdom of Crocodiles (1998)

The Wisdom of Crocodiles is a film that was doomed to not do well in the United States. This UK film (titled Immortality for American audiences) grossed only $21 thousand during its entire US theater run. In comparison, Blade and John Carpenter's Vampires, which both came out in the same year, grossed $17 million and $9 million in just the US respectively. Yes, in 1998, a philosophical independent film starring a then-nearly-unknown Jude Law was really not going to appeal to an audience used to Hollywood-style action or horror. But, in the era of more thoughtful vampire films like Byzantium and Only Lovers Left Alive, how does the film hold up now?

Review: Vampire Academy (2014)

The main thing to know about Vampire Academy is that it is basically Mean Girls. With vampires. And less humor.

Review: Only Lovers Left Alive (2014)

If you had asked me a month ago what I thought the "golden age" of great vampire stories was, I would have said the early 1990s. Back then, there was a wealth of authentically interesting vampire novels, a popular role-playing game, and films that focused on vampire history and class, like Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula film and, of course, Neil Jordan's Interview with the Vampire. It was also the start of Joss Whedon's popular Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, which balanced teen issues and humor with the same reverence for candlelit history that was popular in Interview.

The 1990s was what got me "into" vampires personally, and an era which I was sad to see "die" with the rise of Hot Topic and the neon and pleather clad vampires in the late-1990s and early-2000s, followed by the rise of Twilight and what seemed like the end of anyone taking vampire films seriously. Ever since, vampire films have often borrowed from other genres (science fiction, comedies, or zombie movies) to stay relevant. As of recently, the age of just good, seriously approached vampire stories seemed like it was in the past.

And then I watched Byzantium, which was haunting and lovely and ultimately much more emotionally compelling than Jordan's earlier Interview. And I could have dismissed that as a single film and not (perhaps) a shift in the vampire genre if I also didn't get the chance to watch Jim Jarmush's Only Lovers Left Alive this past weekend. Ladies and gentlemen, are we in for a vampire art renaissance?