The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 1 | Film review

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part I

He mopes around like the most bloodless bloodsucker this side of an Anne Rice novel, but it turns out Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) is a real beast in the sack. Over the course of three Twilight movies, this century-old cradle robber has stifled the urge to make a woman out of his virginal sweetheart, wanna-be vampire-bride Bella (Kristen Stewart). Don’t tell Team Jacob, but the time for abstinence is over: In Breaking Dawn—Part 1, the two lovebirds finally tie the knot, then jet off to a private island for some monster-on-maiden quality time. Trouble is, one night of rough honeymoon sex is all it takes for Edward to decide he’d rather get off on withholding—and soon Bella finds out her undead hubby isn’t firing blanks.

Directed by a slumming Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters, Kinsey), Breaking Dawn boasts the same supermarket-grade storytelling and poisonously retrograde gender politics as its predecessors. Its saving grace is that it’s also completely fucking insane. Her belly large with demon spawn, Stewart spends most of the film looking more cadaverous than any vampire the series has ever unleashed; someone get that girl a warm cup of plasma and a sandwich, stat. Taylor Lautner returns as wolfboy Jacob, the possessive, perpetually shirtless yin to Edward’s brooding-creeper yang. Meanwhile, the vamps weigh in on the abortion debate, and Condon stages a grisly surgical set piece as though he were back on the set of his Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh. Oh, and someone falls in love with a baby. If this shit gets any weirder, it might threaten to get watchable.