Generally, despite their failure to approach real quality, the Twilight movies have tended to get better with each installment owing mostly to better directors taking the helm. Sadly, with Breaking Dawn part 1, the trend is thrown into reverse and we are handed easily the worst of the series, and for those of you keeping score at home, that is REALLY fucking bad.

Breaking Dawn part 1 picks up where Eclipse left off with Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) engaged to be married and then meanders its way through their wedding, their honeymoon and Bella’s pregnancy. This is obviously the first half of the book upon which these travesties are based and you can tell that director Bill Condon struggled to fill the 1 hour and 46 minute run time with anything even vaguely interesting. What is sad is that this installment is filled with things the fans wanted to see and things that have been building up since the beginning.

I was legitimately looking forward to seeing how Condon was going to handle risque material that should land the film into R territory and I was disappointed to find that he skirted those issues by completely copping out and using lens flare fades and cut aways with close ups on Kristin Stewart’s face as she looks slightly more uncomfortable than she did when she was ‘happy’ at her wedding. The only shocking thing found in this film is that it has managed to backpedal the quality of the series even more than the lows achieved by previous efforts. It is really actually pretty impressive to make a worse Twilight film than the original Twilight but god bless Condon, he pulled it off.

Normally I would let the director off the hook given how awful the source material is and the fact that the director is not an alchemist and cannot turn lead into gold no matter how hard he or she tries but in this case I place a lot of blame here on Condon. The Twilight films have never been a tour de force of acting with legitimately talented people phoning it in but here the acting is so bad it has to be a directorial decision. This stuff is sub-mexican telenovella level here. The melodrama is only matched by the general disaffectedness of everyone one screen who, even when yelling and angry, always seem to be aware of the fact that they have to maintain the posture of a Calvin Klein ad.

It might be that Condon knows that his cast is on autopilot and couldn’t muster real emotions if doing so would prevent the rape of 1000 puppies because he ratchets up the score and licensed music to 11 and lets it play over every moment of screen time. This wouldn’t be so bad if the music wasn’t the manipulative and amateurish efforts of soap opera. The score has been bad and obvious in previous films but if there were subliminal messages in the score here saying things like ‘Now Edward and Bella are enjoying their honeymoon despite both of them still generally looking put out by the fact that they are on an island paradise’ I would not be surprised. The score really distracts from what is happening on the screen and, while I would normally appreciate anything that does that, it manages to be even worse than the overwrought bullshit playing out in front of you. There is not a moment of the movie that I didn’t notice how awful the music was and that pretty much flies in the face of what a score is supposed to do.

The pacing and dialogue is also the worst of the series. The conversation beats are completely off and it makes for awkward moments that feel forced and false. There is not a genuine moment in the entire film. Everything feels scripted and performed. Somehow, in the midst of this stilted dialogue and unnatural delivery, the movie still manages to feel overly sentimental and melodramatic. This is really something and I am kind of fascinated by how Condon pulled it off.

From an aesthetic tip, the movie also takes a big step back. Eclipse had vampires that looked dangerous and werewolves that, while still cuddly looking, looked as if they might do some damage if, I don’t know, you stopped petting it for too long. Here the vampires all pretty much look like if Eddie Munster grew up and became an Abercrombie and Fitch model and the werewolves are back to looking floaty and without real weight. Hair styles are also kind of out of control here and this is not a series known for its restraint when it comes to the hair department. When Ashley Greene looks like a dead hooker someone found in a hotel mattress a good three weeks too late, you know you have a real problem.

As mentioned, the performances are all terrible and it makes me sad. I don’t hold these movies against any of the actors because who would turn down Twilight money but there has to be a part of Anna Kendrick that dies inside every time one of these things comes out. I know that the paycheck probably makes up for the artistic pain but holy shit I can’t imagine how any of them sleep at night. Again, the lack of any amount of chemistry between Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson is shocking and it especially hamstrings the few seconds of sex we are ‘treated’ to.  Seeing the scenes that make it to screen in this series makes me wonder if anyone at any level of the production cares about quality at all.

So here is the thing, I have just spent 900+ words talking about the lack of quality behind and in front of the camera and many of the technical issues and I haven’t touched upon how completely fucking stupid the story is or how disturbing the tacit acceptance of pedophilia run through a dues ex machina veneer. The co-dependency and abusive nature of the relationship is downplayed slightly here as Edward finally starts to accept that Bella has friends who aren’t him but that is disturbingly replaced by Bella’s desire to be with him so bad that she will have to fake her own death and never see her family again to do it. That is koo koo bananas and is definitely the product of someone who either hates her parents or who doesn’t know what it is like to lose one. I am sorry but any situation where the choice to be with someone equals never seeing your family again is one in which I will be single really fucking quickly. Time and time again the series offers up horrid dysfunction as true love and romance and it makes me really sick. I feel like the poor quality of the story and horrifying implications of what happens in it is getting the short shrift in this review but it is what it is. I really don’t think I can bear devoting another 1000 words to it at this point.

Conclusion [1 out of 10]

I would give it no stars but there are people on the screen and workable sound so it has to at least get credit for being competently filmed on the most basic level. This movie suffers from just about every problem it can from bad source material to artificial extension by the studio to keep the cash train moving. Sitting through this thing is roughly as painful as waiting for the paramedics to come drag you out of a car crash and at least in that situation you don’t have to hear the awful music punctuating every second in the most obvious way possible. I can’t tell you how glad I am that there is only one more of these things.