Commentary: ‘Twilight’ tarnishes vampire reputation, turns savage blood-suckers into sparkly emos

A story about a girl who falls in love with a vampire. This sounds like a reasonable plot for a film at first thought. But take away any fearsome element a vampire film might possess, add obnoxious characters and throw in a dysfunctional relationship based on zero mutual interest, and you’re left with a dreadful take on vampire fiction whose popularity is far from justifiable.

Now brush past the thousands of “fan girls” and obsessive admirers, and you’ll see that for every film hit sensation, there’s at least a handful of people who just as equally loathe and criticize its popularity. With the release of “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2” Friday, I am again reminded why I am one of them.

Coming from someone who has never touched a novel from this series or made any attempt to see one of the films, some might feel as though my judgment of “Twilight” could be close-minded or just plain irrelevant. However, having friends who make it a priority to attend each midnight showing and having done my research, I know more about the content of each book than most “Twilight” haters do.

I’ll spare you my arguments about how the books consist of dreadful writing and give women a bad reputation, and I’ll refrain from pointing out some of the disturbing qualities in the story.

Instead, I’ll focus my banter on one argument in particular, the most important one, which comes from the point of view of a horror film fanatic.

As far as scary movies go, over the years there have been a few consistent factors that we could rely on – Michael Myers seems to never die, aiming for a zombie’s head usually does the job, your dreams aren’t safe territory when Freddy Krueger takes over and vampires are blood-sucking, yet badass monsters.

It appears that in this current age, what was once a horrific, spine-chilling fictional character has transformed into a whiny, sparkling high-schooler with this monstrosity of “Twilight.”

Let’s rewind to 1897, when Bram Stoker’s vision of the creatures we know as vampires were created with his novel “Dracula.”

Now, let’s compare “Dracula,” and many of these mythical predators thereafter, to Stephenie Meyer’s 2005 version of Edward Cullen.

Vampires, such as Dracula, hunt their prey, ripping them apart limb from limb, sucking their blood. Edward marries his. Vampires are extremely sensitive to sunlight and burst into flames after exposure to it. Edward sparkles under the sun. Vampires are known as the undead, therefore should not be able to impregnate a human. Edward somehow has a daughter with his wife, Bella.

Generally speaking, vampires were created as horrific blood-sucking monsters meant to instill fear in the viewers, however, thanks to Meyer, we have an awkward, emo vampire who gives the impression of being loving and melodramatic rather than terrifying and savage.

Aside from achieving success it does not deserve, which I could’ve looked past, the “Twilight” series has done the inexpressible act of ruining vampirism, quite possibly beyond repair. Color me team pissed off.