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Oh my freaking lord...I mean, Jesus Christ, what the fuck? Are you kidding me? This is a cultural phenomenon? I...I just...well, I just have no words. I'm going to use them anyway, but they will fall short of expressing my actual reaction to this film. It's not the worst film I've seen; I've seen far too many. But it is undoubtedly one of the worst films I've ever seen for its profile level and instant success, and that includes Batman and Robin. Oh, yes. It really does. From top to bottom, this is a film made by complete and total whores. Talentless, pandering whores. I'm ashamed to be part of their species. 
The first Twilight was about a girl who fell in love with the world's most emasculated vampire. This film is about, at most, a girl still in love with said vampire, but beyond that, I can honestly say that this is a film about nothing. It has miraculously managed to shoot below the bar set by the first film, even though that bar was pretty much lying flat on the ground already. The opening sets up a triangle between the pathetic, self-hating Bella, Edward the vampire, and Jacob, the nice boy about to become a werewolf. Attending a birthday party the vampire family is throwing for her, she is nearly killed by one of them when she gets a tiny paper cut and exposes them to the sight of a minute quantity of her blood. It does seriously beg the question of how these creatures manage to pass effectively for human and appear sentient and rational when they apparently have the mental capacities of sharks; I'm not a vegetarian, but I don't uncontrollably assault random cows I may pass while driving through the country. After this incident, Edward laconically states that he will be leaving the country so as not to expose Bella to any more such danger, as he too feels the bloodlust and might just kill her. After three months spent staring motionless out of her window, she begins hanging out with Jacob, just in time for him to hit werewolfdom and tell her that she can't see him anymore, lest he go berserk and kill her. So there you have what passes for a plot: the loneliness of being torn between two humorless clods who threaten you with violence. Oh, the angst. This film is utterly pathetic. It is filled to the bursting point with vast boxcar loads of nothing. The editor seems to have been instructed to space out all alleged events with slightly longer spans of non-events, lest the paper-thin story blow by in a minute and a half. This includes pretty much all conversations, in which awkward pauses are included between any two given bits of speaking. Things seem to be about to happen, occasionally threaten to happen, and then happen with so little fanfare that they pass without us being sure if they really did happen. When they do, they're usually so insipid we suddenly wish they weren't happening anymore. Ostensibly male characters utter lines such as "You think I'm sort of beautiful?" as if to solidify the notion that novelist Stephanie Meyer and her screenwriter have never spoken to an actual male in their entire lives. Pretty boys fresh off of a Calvin Klein shoot wander shirtless through the woods for the titillation of little girls, reminding anyone who missed it that this is basically softcore for fourteen year-olds. Edward speaks in a monotone about how Bella "gives him all he needs just by breathing," speaks in a monotone about how he'd rather die than live without her, and expresses relief in a monotone when she's found to be safe. It's a mute, emotionless film about deep and undying love. If you don't see the problem, I can only guess it's because you worked on this piece of crap, or are an idiot. 
The film does its viewers a terrible disservice by introducing the subject of suicide after about an hour and a half of this drivel, when the audience is probably terribly suggestible to such ideas. When the climax finally arrives, it's so underwhelming that even the film itself doesn't notice that it's supposed to be over, and continues moping along for another fifteen minutes or so of additional cringe-worthy dialogue and posturing. The sole entertaining scene arrives in the form of the dialogue coming from an unseen action flick Bella attends on an awkward three-way date; sadly, the intentionally generic-sounding shoot-em-up ("Oh yeah? Well, I'll blow both your heads off!") comes off as far more entertaining than the film we're actually watching. New Moon's ultimate theme seems to be about the nobility of a girl standing by her man despite his coldness and constant threats of violence; it's outright deplorable that such a despicable notion is being feverishly marketed at young women, and disheartening that they seem to be gobbling up that shitty idea so voraciously. -review by Matt Murray
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