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Twilight In Forks: The Saga Of The Real Town
R1 - America - Summit Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (21st March 2010). |
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The Film
 Even though there seem to be dozens of movies, TV shows or sports teams that create absolutely rabid fanbases, wholly devoted to the product in bizarre ways. Many have tried to document these fan bases, from the efforts of fans of “Firefly” (2002) in getting “Serenity” (2005) made, “Done the Impossible” (2006), or the devoted “Star Trek” fans in “Trekkies” (1997), or even the efforts and grief of Seattle Supersonics fans in trying, and failing, to keep their NBA franchise in “Sonicsgate” (2009). All of these films do an interesting job of covering the fan base while having some sort of controlling story, talking about fans and offering commentary or looking deep into the obsessiveness of fan culture. Suprisingly “Twilight in Forks” broaches the subject, but doesn’t quite go the full mile on documenting the "Twilight" fanbase and it’s interaction with the town. “Twilight in Forks” looks at the small Washington town of Forks that has embraced the “Twilight” phenomena. It’s a little frightening and sad seeing the way that the town’s chamber of commerce and the general merchants around the area have become obsessive themselves. The town has become a site of "Twilight" fandom, as the movies are based there, even though none of the movies have ever filmed in Forks. It’s all simply because Stephanie Meyer wrote, badly, some vampire romances. It’s a little amazing, and really intriguing on one level, to see the story of a tiny town whose lumber industry was faltering and suffering from a poor economic situation that has experienced a boom in tourism thanks to the “Twilight” obsessive. The best interviews in the documentary come from those on the outskirts of the fan phenomena, he doesn’t read or care about "Twilight" but understands that it’s nice to have all of the fans coming through town to help keep all of their businesses afloat and support their local economy. But this comes in a few short lines, as the majority of the documentary is overrun with the “Twilight” obsessive, those who want nothing more to praise Stephanie Meyer and tell you about how amazing “Twilight” is. It’s important and necessary to really showing the crazed dedication of a fanbase, but at the same time I’m more interested in the town and Quileute tribe and fandom’s impact on them. Yet despite the interesting stories of the Quileute and the non-“Twilight” fans in Forks, their stories are mostly left on the outskirts, with a few exceptions and sections, but the dominant story here are those obsessed with a town based in a book where the author, according to the documentary, had never even visited before the first book was written. However the biggest problem with the so-called documentary is the way it’s produced and directed and broken down. Rather than feeling like a real documentary, it’s broken up into odd sections using the same graphic and titlecards to give a brief one word summation of the film. The more you watch, the more it becomes apparent that this was likely intended as an expanded multi-part documentary to go on the “New Moon” (2009) DVD and Blu-ray release that they decided to somewhat double dip on considering the lack of features on this disc and on the “New Moon” set. Lacking any sort of guiding voice or narrative, this documentary is sort of a scatterbrained look at a small town dramatically impacted by a set of poorly written novels and films. There are points of interest that drew me in a little bit, but for each bit of interesting information there’s another 20 minutes filled with people praising and glorifying the “Twilight” culture and Stephanie Meyer that I could really do with less of. Jason Brown’s directing lacks focus and storytelling, which would work as a multi-part special feature documentary/featurette, but as a stand alone documentary it just isn’t well put together enough to sustain itself.
Video
Presented in a 1.78:1 anamorphic aspect ratio the video isn’t that bad of quality, its mostly talking head interviews put together with some clips and different "Twilight" related cuts. Visually it’s not terribly interesting to see people talk in just interviews with no other shots really, there’s a little bit of crispness to it on DVD, but at the same time the way they blur some of the backgrounds in the interviews brings in a bit of pixilation through the focus, as well as some iffy color tones in some of the interviews.
Audio
With the main audio track only being an English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo track, the audio quality really isn’t that great. For what the film is, an amalgamation of people talking, the audio quality is right about where you would expect. There’s a little bit of incidental music, echoing behind some of the interviews and some of the way the interviewees are recorded it brings in all kinds of noises, like the hum of fluorescent lights or loud passing traffic, that should have been taken care of through the mastering process or the initial recording. The only other options are English for the hearing impaired and Spanish subtitles.
Extras
Absolutely none. No start-up trailers, no commentary, nothing to make me think that this wasn’t a double-dip off of what should have been a featurette.
Overall
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