Hating Twilight seemed cool – now I can’t wait to re-watch

I witnessed the first wave of Twilight obsession as a 14-year-old boy in the 2000s. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that, at the time, I had vowed to always reject it. 

I hadn’t witnessed a second of Twilight, yet somehow I knew it was terrible. Received wisdom said Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart couldn’t act, the love story was soppy and lack substance, vampires shouldn’t sparkle, and ‘girly’ interests should be disregarded.

The endless re-reads and re-watches were unlike anything I’d witnessed before. It short-circuited my uncurious, ignorant 14-year-old brain, so I immediately discounted it, performatively boasting about my ignorance whenever it came up.

All five Twilight saga films return to UK cinemas this autumn, marking the 20th anniversary of the first of Stephanie Meyer’s vampire romance novels, and, at the age of 31, I have already booked my tickets with giddy excitement. 

I feel like I have a chance to right a disgraceful adolescent wrong here – and as a millennial male who came of age in a vampire-obsessed world, I think I might not be the only one. 

When the first film premiered in November 2008, it was an immediate cultural landmark for almost every teenage girl in my orbit. The saga followed the dangerous love triangle between 17-year-old Bella, mysterious local boy Edward (actually a 104-year-old vampire) and her childhood friend, werewolf Jacob. Fandom obsession bordered on zealotry.

Despite being an obnoxious little scrote, I had a girlfriend. She loved Twilight. I begrudgingly saw the second instalment, New Moon, with her in 2009. I was one of two boys among 80 to 100 girls.

I probably complained the whole time, ignorant of how joyless I made the occasion. 

During one scene, Bella Swan crashed a motorbike. Watching on, Jacob leapt into action. He raced to Bella, ripped off his shirt, displaying his ridiculously buff body, and tenderly dabbed the cut on her forehead. The entire cinema gasped and shrieked with delight as the pair stared into each other’s eyes.

It was at that exact moment I realised that Jacob was everything I wasn’t. Not only did I not have his impressive physique, I wasn’t protective or selfless either. I wasn’t mysterious or elusive, I didn’t make anyone feel safe. I wasn’t an advert for positive masculinity. 

I wasn’t even a werewolf. 

I was just an uptight, snivelling little boy. 

Because of this insecurity, I hid my appreciation. It didn’t matter how brave I thought it was for Edward Cullen be absent for so long in order to protect Bella, or how the story deconstructed the #TeamEdward and #TeamJacob bickering by re-enforcing that it was Bella’s story above everyone else’s. I couldn’t let it be known, even to myself. 

As we left the cinema, my girlfriend asked for my thoughts – I just shrugged and squirmed out a ‘meh’. We obviously didn’t last much longer, and I avoided the rest of the subsequent films, petrified of enjoying them.

As I left my teens, I began to wonder where my instinctive pubescent hatred of ‘girly’ pop culture had originated. It doesn’t take a genius to work out why I wasn’t devoted to Twilight, but still, the hatred felt sinister upon recollection. 

I realised I’d resented the films back then purely because I was envious. Twilight made girls feel things that I couldn’t – safe, excited, and comforted.

Over time, I grew up. The anger and envy left my body. I started rolling my eyes whenever I saw the ‘still a better love story than Twilight’ meme. But I had never returned to watch the whole series. Then Covid hit, a combination of lockdown boredom and social media FOMO set in, and the full Blu-ray boxset was ordered.

I anticipated an easy, nostalgic time. I was sure I’d feel affectionate for New Moon at the very least, but I still half-expected to scoff at the tastes and habits of millennial teens. A trip down memory lane.

It’s a classic teen crisis movie. A 21st century soap opera, full of unrequited love, unfulfilled carnal urges, agonising celibacy, and life-or-death danger. It’s a story about young people (or vampires in the bodies of young people) struggling at the cusp of adulthood, where love feels all-encompassing. 

The jumping and flying effects are janky, and there’s a whiff of chastity propaganda, but the only major difference I could see between Twilight and films like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, or Blade, or even The Lost Boys, was that the characters in Twilight seemed to spend more time on their phones (or wearing ripped jorts).

Things have improved since 2008, but there is still pressure on films aimed primarily at teen girls to broaden their appeal and darken their tone to be valuable. 

It’s as though filmmakers feel they need to forget what 17 feels like for their works to be taken seriously, or to be featured in awards conversations. 

I’m still waiting for Twilight to be critically reappraised in the same way that the Star Wars prequels, or the similarly gothic-flavoured late 2000s teen horror Jennifer’s Body, have been. 

The saga should be celebrated for what it is: a romantic, supernatural melodrama that, a few bum notes aside, offers impressively rendered escapism and fantasy. There was no harm in it then, and there’s no harm in it now.

So hopefully this anniversary re-release can change even more minds.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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