Is it PARANORMAL ACTIVITY IV or LAST EXORCISM II? I have trouble keeping those roman numerals straight.

Sitting down to write a review of THE LAST EXORCISM PART II, I find myself somewhat in the position of the modern satirist, who finds the real world has become so ridiculous that there is little room to push the envelope even further for comic effect, rendering the concept of satire almost redundant. In my case, reviewing THE LAST EXORCISM PART II is virtually redundant because you, dear reader, have already viewed it. Oh, you may not have paid for a ticket yet, but believe me, you have seen it all – in other, earlier – though not necessarily better – movies. But then, this is hardly surprising. After all, if the previous film offered the exorcism – the end of the line, done, finished, all over and used up – then we have only ourselves to blame for expecting anything new in PART II.

Ashley Bell as Nell, a fragile soul seeking to escape her traumatic past.

What is mildly interesting is that what we have seen before is not necessarily from THE LAST EXORCISM. In fact, PART II makes a laudable attempt to distance itself from its predecessor, using those that film’s plot only as a back story and abandoning the pseudo-documentary stylings in favor of a more conventional approach that focuses on the soul survivor of the confusing conflagration that consumed the characters at the conclusion of Part 1.

This time out, Nell (Ashley Bell) is the focus of our attention, as she tries to recover from her traumatic past while evading evil forces that may be pursuing her or may exist only in her mind. (One guess: which turns out to be correct?)  Bell provides an award-worth performance as a lost and fragile soul, struggling to come to grips with unpleasant memories and to find a place for herself in a modern world that makes her feel like a stranger in a strange land (after years couped up in the creepy cabin of the first film).

Nell's past shows up in the form of a masked man, who seems to have wandered in from the set of EYES WIDE SHUT.

The inevitable problem with this scenario is that generic demands trump satisfying drama. No matter how much the opening scenes engage our sympathy, it is all for naught – simply a set up for the sturm and drang to come, during which THE LAST EXORCISM PART II jettisons everything that worked in order to parade a few well-worn shocks across the screen like has-beens on a decrepit vaudeville stage, before proceeding to the sadly predictable finale.

I say “predictable,” because (as I indicated above) you have seen it before, along with almost everything else in the film. Seriously, if you have watched more than a few horror movies this year, you have seen THE LAST EXORCISM PART II, almost from beginning to end. Don’t believe me? Well, read on…

WARNING: Major spoilers abound.

• We start with a reasonably well-staged set-piece of a couple alarmed by an unexpected intrusion, which turns out to be a feral-looking child, hunched on all fours atop a shelf (MAMA).
• The child – well, young woman – turns out to be orphaned, or at least abandoned, with a supernatural force pursuing her and protecting her (also MAMA).
• There is a spooky cult, seen at the end of the previous film, that wants to drag her back into the fold (essentially PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 – which was last year, but still…).
• We know our girl is being targeted by evil forces because she levitates above her bed (also PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4).
• Also, a flock of birds go kamikaze on the windows of a building she is in (apparently having flapped over from DARK SKIES).
• The dilemma, it turns out, is that the young woman must decide whether to renounce the darkness or join forces with it (BEAUTIFUL CREATURES).
• Helping her in this effort is a sympathetic black female supporting character, who can offer a little non-Christian spiritual support because this is the South, where they have all the voodoo stuff (also BEAUTIFUL CREATURES and come to think of it, kinda sort THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT 2: GHOSTS OF GEORGIA).
• In the end, the exorcism proves ineffective (THE LAST EXORCISM), and the invading entity gains purchase within the body of an innocent victim (INSIDIOUS).

Nell listens to erotic moans emanating through the walls of a motel room she is cleaning. Needless to say, sexy stuff is the devil's gateway into your soul.

If you don’t mind re-watching a virtual montage of other horror movies, THE LAST EXORCISM PART II is interesting for a while, although its slow build-up is more “slow” than “build-up.” The spook scenes more or less sustain themselves in the first half, when the filmmakers keep to relatively believable phenomena that could be explained away as dreams, hallucinations, or coincidence. But the urge to supply a fright-filled finale pushes the film beyond its ability to sustain credibility (a roomful of levitating knifes seems lifted from an Italian EXORCIST rip-off, circa 1979.)

It is almost an article of faith among contemporary horror films that Evil is all powerful and unstoppable, so much so that resistance is futile; the characters might as well give up and resign themselves to their fate before the film even starts, saving us the trouble of wasting our time to see them reach their inevitable end. Back in the 1970s, this sort of cynicism made some kind of sense in the context of the disillusionment engendered by Watergate, the Vietnam War, and the threat of mutually assured nuclear annihilation; today, it merely seems arbitrary.

I suppose that, if one were in a sympathetic frame of mind, one could find an argument to justify THE LAST EXORCISM PART II’s final turn of events, which offer just a hint of the rebellious joyful anarchy – bordering on self-righteous glee – that results from overthrowing one’s oppressors. Somewhat miraculously, Ashley Bell engages our sympathy almost strongly enough to make us vicariously endorse this conclusion (somewhat in the manner that we root for Carrie White’s prom-night revenge).

In THE LAST EXORCISM PART II, even the church seems in on the conspiracy.

Unfortunately, the scenario is too contrived to support this reading credibly. Everyone is suspect – possibly part of the evil conspiracy, as evidenced by an unnerving trip to a church, where a chaplain offers not so soothing spiritual comfort in dialogue carefully calibrated to obscure whether he is talking about God or Abalam. Furthermore, the alleged representatives of the Power of Good (called the “right-hand path”) are too closely akin to the incompetent Jedi from STAR WARS, EPISODE III: THE REVENGE OF THE SITH, who seem to almost deliberately drive Anakin to join the Dark Side of the Force. Poor double-crossed Nell – we are led to believe – has no choice but to accept the demonic Abalam, because everyone else is so afraid of what will happen if she accepts Abalam.

Except, you know, her sympathetic therapist. And her would-be boyfriend, whom Abalam forces to commit suicide (nice, effective way to earn your potential victim’s sympathy and convince her to submit willingly!). There’s also the nagging problem that Abalam, we are told, is weak without Nell as a vessel for his power – until the script needs him to be so powerful that he cannot be exorcised,* scaring the Right-Hand Path into attempting to kill Nell in order to prevent Abalam from entering her and fulfilling an apocalyptic prophecy.

On her fingers, Ashley Bell optimistically counts future LAST EXORCISM sequels.

Is it any wonder the poor girl goes a little bit off the rails at the end? I mean, who wouldn’t – the script (if not the devil) made her do it. Too bad the switch from victim to victimizer feels like a half-hearted afterthought, targeting a handful of (mostly off-screen) victims. Instead of a cathartic explosion of apocalypstic proportions, we get a joy ride, a few computer-generated flames, and some rock-and-roll on the soundtrack.

This, it seems, is how the world ends – not with a bang but with a music video.

THE LAST EXORCISM PART II (March 1, 2013). CBS Films, 88 minutes, rated R. Written by Damien Chazell and Ed Gass-Donelley. Directed by Ed Gass-Donnelly. Cast: Ashley Bell, Julia Garner, Spencer Treat Clark, David Jensen, Tarra Riggs, Louis Herthum, Muse Watson, Erica Michelle, Sharice A. Williams, Boyana Balta, Joe Chrest.

FOOTNOTE:

• Yes, there is an exorcism in THE LAST EXORCISM PART II. Which means that THE LAST EXORCISM did not, in fact, feature the “last exorcism.”

Keri Russell is menaced by an alien in "Dark Skies."

DARK SKIES proves once again (as if any proof were necessary) that Blumhouse Productions has codified its horror template to the point that their films are the cinematic equivalent of blues music: the lyrics may change, but the subject matter or tone; and regardless of the writers and performers, you will hear the same 12-bar chord progression, hitting the same beats, with approximately the same musical arrangements. In this case, the innovation lies in the switch from unseen supernatural forces to unseen alien invaders; otherwise, the song remains the same.

In case you did not know it, the nuclear family is disintegrating. Mom and Dad cannot support their family’s suburban lifestyle. They argue – maybe not about money, but they argue because of money – or, more precisely, the lack of it. In fact, they are so busy arguing that they do not realize the greater threat lurking in the shadows of their home. Their children try to tell them, but hey – they’re just kids, and what do they know anyway? So the parents don’t listen; they just focus on financial problems, not realizing that even if Mom sells the property she is trying to unload, or if Dad gets the new job for which he has applied, that’s not going to solve the real problem.

I am of course talking about DARK SKIES here, but with a few changes the above paragraph could apply equally well to SINISTER or PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4, both of which revolved around monsters attempting – successfully, as it turned out – to snatch children right out from under Mom and Dad’s nose.

Fortunately, the parents in DARK SKIES are not quite as absurdly oblivious as the clueless couple in PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4. They actually figure out something is wrong and consult a self-styled expert (J.K. Simmons, filling in for Vincent D’Onofrio, who performed similar service in SINISTER). Based on what they learn, they even try to do something about the problem, which generates a third act that almost resembles a legitimate piece of storytelling.

It’s nice to see DARK SKIES abandon the “Ignorant Plot” that fueled its immediate predecessors (in which ignorant characters wandered around for 90 minutes, seldom if ever getting a read on what was after them), but it is all for naught, since the conclusion is predetermined. (If that sounds like a spoiler, don’t blame me: DARK SKIES’ poster spells it out: “Once you’ve been chose, you belong to them.”)

As if sensing that predictability is a problem, writer-director Scott Stewart tosses in a last-minute – well, “surprise” would be too strong a word, as would “twist,” so let’s say “shift” – regarding the identity of the victim being targeted. This does not change the outcome in any meaningful way, nor does it lend any kind of dramatic frisson; it merely provides an illusion of the unexpected, a pretense toward actual plotting – as opposed to simply filling in the same old template.

I get the impression that Stewart intended a little bit more. Early scenes of the children’s pet lizard hints at some kind of foreshadowing – the aliens look down on us as we look down on animals – but nothing comes of the idea. The attempt to weave the alien scenario into the family drama suggests an attempt to provide a darker alternative to M. Night Shyamalan’s SIGNS (which is echoed and quoted in several ways), but we never truly identify with the storytelling as anything more than an excuse to stitch together the scares, and any attempt at a dramatic resolution is short-circuited by the de rigueur denouement.

An alien makes a shadowy appearance behind Keri Russell.
If you are a fan of previous horror films from Blumhouse Productions, you will probably enjoy the same old song one more time. The cast of non-stars do a decent job of portraying everyday people. As usual, the slow build-up of suspense is carefully calculated, and the creepy set pieces are effectively handled. If only the scenario could weave a more convincing plot thread, there might be a real movie here. (In one of the scripts more amusing moments of lip-service, the inexplicable – and frankly pointless – scare tactics of the aliens are rationalized by the claim that the invaders are exploiting our fears, for reasons unknown – presumably, it’s some kind of psychological behavioral experiment?)

I feel a bit treacherous for shedding so much negative light on DARK SKIES. After all, Blumhouse Productions strives to craft horror films that rely on subtlety rather than shocks, on atmosphere rather than action. Their commodity is rare in today’s cinematic marketplace, so they deserve recognition for proving that this approach can sell tickets, but as the lackluster debut of DARK SKIES shows ($8.9-million for a sixth-place opening weekend) Blumhouse needs to infuse its formula with a little more variety and creativity.

DARK SKIES (February 22, 2013). Written and directed by Scott Stewart. PG-13. In widescreen and Dolby Digital. Produced by Blumhouse Productions. Distributed by Paramount Pictures. Cast: Keri Russell, Josh Hamilton, Dakota Goyo, Kadan Rockett, J.K. Simmons, L. J. Benet.

What's missing from THE HOBBIT poster? The Hobbit! Sort of a metaphor for the film itself

If you are a fan of Peter Jackson’s LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, good fortune has smiled upon you this weekend, because THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY contains more of what you enjoyed before – much, much more. In fact, there is so much LORD OF THE RINGS that there is barely any room for THE HOBBIT. Unfortunately, instead of simply adapting J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel, Jackson has opted to use the story as a jumping off point for a convoluted prequel that threatens to do for Middle Earth what George Lucas’s STAR WARS prequels did for a galaxy far, far away.

The strategy yields a schizoid mess that buries Tolkien’s simple tale beneath an avalanche of expository dialogue and CGI action  - the former intended to tie the events into the previous films, the latter intended to pad the story into an action-adventure epic. The problem is that, unlike before, this story is not big enough to support the epic length. Whereas THE LORD OF THE RINGS felt dense, even with each film clocking in at over three hours, THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY feels thin – a good first act (of what should have been a two-hour movie) stretched to interminable length in order to fill a feature-length running time over two and a half hours.

The result is strangely disengaging – a virtual remake, hitting all the beats of its predecessor but missing the emotional resonance. The similarity is certainly inherent in the source material (when Tolkien wrote his sequel to The Lord of the Rings, he reused many story elements from The Hobbit), but Jackson has deliberately emphasized the echoes in an effort to recreate his winning formula of expanding the author’s literary prose into stunning cinematic visuals.

For example, like THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY begins with a massive battle in which monster-thingy smites a king whose heir must set things right, and it ends with our heroes standing on a hill looking into the distance at a forbidding mountain to which they will travel in the next installment. The images look just as spectacular as before, but this time they feel like empty spectacle.

Which wouldn’t be so bad if the spectacle were a little more…well – spectacular – but Jackson seems to have lost sight of how to build thrilling action scenes in which characters are caught in dangerous situations but manage to find a way out through ingenuity or perseverance. There is a surfeit of CGI long-shots of animated characters running around toppling bridges but less of the eye-level live-action camera work that drew the audience into the action to build suspense. The aesthetic here is less LORD OF THE RINGS than it is the silly T-Rex trapeze sequence in Jackson’s KING KONG 2004 remake. In a weird way, THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY even recalls Toho’s giant monster films of the 1960s, when less and less live-action was filmed, reducing the city destruction to a series of crumbling miniatures bereft of any human scale.

Gollum (Andy Serkis) wonders "What has it got in its pocketss!"

Every once in a while, a scene comes alive in a way that makes a viewer yearn for what might have been. Gollum’s riddles in the dark with Bilbo are creepy and funny – the scene works as a stand-alone moment in in this film, and it foreshadows events that will happen later in LORD OF THE RINGS – without any heavy-handed cinematic threading to tie the incidents together. Ian McKellen is wonderful as ever as Gandalf: when he delivers his message in favor of mercy to Bilbo, he really does seem to be channeling a higher wisdom worth remembering. And Bilbo’s explanation of why he decides to help the dwarves is genuinely moving (Bilbo yearns for home – something the dwarves do not have).

Too bad THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY could not have focused on these considerable strengths instead of drowning them in a sea of CGI set-pieces and ill-conceived ret-conning. Tolkien’s tale is a fairly straight-forward children’s fantasy about Bilbo Baggins joining the wizard Gandalf and a dozen dwarves on a quest to reclaim their homeland from the dragon Smaug. His Lord of the Rings sequel trilogy is much deeper and darker, and Tolkien himself had to do a little revamping to stitch the two together (rewriting substantial portions of Gollum’s appearance in Chapter 5 of The Hobbit). However, when Tolkien later sat down to do a complete rewrite of The Hobbit, to bring it more in line with Lord of the Rings, he abandoned the task after three chapters, when someone told him “It’s not The Hobbit anymore.” Sadly, Peter Jackson did not heed the lesson of this anecdote. The humorous antics of the original (e.g., the three  trolls arguing over how to kill and cook Bilbo and his companions) remain, but the tone of these sequences jars with the grizzly, quasi-horror material that has been added.

In the appendix to Lord of the Rings and in various post-humously published stories, Tolkien laid out the connections (particularly in “Quest for Erebor,” in which Gandalf explains that, while the dwarves may have been concerned only with reclaiming their homeland from Smaug, Gandalf was eager to prevent the dragon from becoming an ally of the dark lord Sauron). Apparently, Jackson’s goal is to incorporate these ulterior motives and behind-the-scenes machinations into his prequel trilogy. Consequently, non-essential bits of business (e.g., the Necromancer – originally conceived as a plot device to get Gandalf off-stage for a while and later re-imagined as an incarnation of Sauron) end up being over-emphasized. Saruman (Christopher Lee), Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) and Eldrond (Hugo Weaving) also show up, so that Gandalf can voice to them his concern about the evil brewing in the east. As interesting and admirable as it is to use the cinematic format to synthesize these elements together in a way the novel never could, the unfortunate side effect is that poor Bilbo, the little hobbit who could, gets pushed too often to the sidelines, obscuring what should be the main narrative.* And for all its attempt to satisfy the geeks audience by maintaining continuity between the films, Bilbo’s acquisition of the Ring plays out quite differently here than in the prologue from THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING.

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY is not a complete disaster. There is still a good little movie in there, wishing it could escape from the epic aspirations forced upon it; the production values and special effects are excellent. The cast give it their all: Andy Serkis is as fun as ever as Gollum; and as Bilbo, Martin Freeman is a serviceable replacement for LORD OF THE RINGS Ian Holm (here seen only in a prologue to set up the flashback to earlier times). However, THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY continues the downward slide that has afflicted all of Jackson’s Tolkien adaptations. It bodes ill for the future films – an omen neither from Mordor nor the Lonely Mountain but from the accounting office in Hollywood that demanded another tent-pole franchise from source material ill-suited to support one.

Bilbo's "warrior face" in this poster is a bit unconvincing.

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (Warner Brothers, December 14, 2012). Directed by Peter Jackson. Screenplay by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, Guillermo Del Toro, based on Tolkien’s novel. Cast: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Ken Stott, Ian Holm, Elijah Wood, Hugo Weaving, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, Andy Serkis, Sylvester McCoy, Lee Pace, Barry Humphries. 169 minutes. PG-13.

FOOTNOTE:

• In a similar way, the 1994 INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE film adaptation marred its narrative by incorporating scenes and ideas that appeared not in the original text but in its literary sequels.

DreamWorks Animation – which minted a fortune by making animated fantasies that spoof and/or ridicule the traditional fairy tale foundation of the form – finally embrace its inner child, and the result is the company’s greatest film to date, even surpassing the virtues of KUNG FU PANDA and PUSS IN BOOTS. The 3-D animation is beautiful – no surprise there, the company has always had a handle on the technical stuff – what is surprising is that the story (which could have come across like THE AVENGERS – LITE) reaches deep into our collective unconscious to render an archetypal battle between the forces of Light and Darkness that is accessible to young viewers while still resonating with adults. On the simple plot level, RISE OF THE GUARDIANS is about a group of superheroes banding together to fight the bad guy, but the film works on a far more sophisticated level than Joss Whedon’s tongue-in-cheek ode to geekdom: RISE OF THE GUARDIANS is really about protecting our childhood Sense of Wonder; fending off nightmares; resisting fear; nurturing simple joys, and embracing the call to a higher vocation.

There are good and bad aspects about a film series, such as HARRY POTTER or THE TWILIGHT SAGA. The bad aspect is that the story has to be stretched over multiple installments that create a deadening sense of inertia: it’s a bit like reading a lengthy novel that forces you to wade through pages and pages of boring exposition before getting to the good stuff, except in the case of a film series it’s not a few chapters – it’s three, four, or five films of nothing much exciting until you get to the final installment. The good aspect of a franchise is that, when you finally reach that final installment, all the conflict and excitement that’s been held in store for so long can finally come out in one big blast. It worked in HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2, and to a lesser degree it works in THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 2.

Throughout the previous entries (TWILIGHT, THE TWILIGHT SAGA: FULL MOON, THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE, THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 1), the films had set new records for treading water, and seldom if ever did anyone involved seem to feel any imperative to show a little artistic ambition. Even director Bill Condon (who crafted the excellent GODS AND MONSTERS back in 1998) seemed to have had his considerable talent eclipsed by the series: faced with the unenviable task of stretching the final book into two films (and thus stretching the box office), he churned out another indistinguishable entry with BREAKING DAWN PART 1.

Fortunately, he shows a little flicker of his old self in BREAKING DAWN PART 2 – just enough to clear a very low bar and give us the best TWILIGHT film yet. Which is not to say that the final chapter is very good, but it does have redeeming features. THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 2 won’t win any converts to either Team Edward or Team Jacob, but it has enough appeal to extend beyond the hardcore fans who attend ritualistically as a form of tribal identifier, rooting for their beloved characters regardless of the cinematic quality (or lack thereof) on screen.

The technical polish is vastly improved since the first TWILIGHT: the high-speed vampire effects are as silly as every, but there is some nice stunt work and some half-way decent action choreography that (if not up to the level of the best Hong Kong supernatural films) at least is not cringe-inducing. The CGI werewolves are not too bad if you don’t look too closely (although sometimes the attempt to make them look big mars the sense of perspective, making them look close to the camera instead). And some of the visual tricks used to convey Bella’s new vampire perspective on the world are nicely done.

Sadly, we’re still in a world dominated by teenage fantasy and surface appearances, where someone is considered “special” because the dialogue tells us so, regardless of actual achievement or effort. In this way, Bella is the ultimate audience-identification figure for high-school girls because her very blandness makes her a blank slate – she could be anybody, and if Bella is special, who’s to say you aren’t special, too?

Kristen Stewart does her "mad" face.

Following this course, the first half of the movie recreates much of what was wrong with its predecessors, lingering over scenes of Edward telling Bella how strong and resilient she is while never imbuing the character with any actual strength (nor imbuing their romance with any actual passion, for that matter). Since becoming a vampire, Bella is supposed to be a more fully realized version of herself, but there is little “self” to realize, so the transformation is conveyed mostly through makeup, which makes her look as though she should be on the cover of “Zombie Glamour” magazine.” Unfortunately, Kristen Stewart’s performance hardly adds any depth beneath the surface: the only thing worse than the bland love-look she uses on Edward is the slightly constipated expression she uses later to convey determination and/or anger.

Bella is gifted with a few talents to help cover her lack of personality. In one of the sillier story elements, newborn vampires are supposed to be stronger than their elders (huh?), so she gets to show off a bit and throw a temper tantrum or two, in one case tossing Jacob around after finding out that he has imprinted on Bella’s daughter. It’s a sloppy way to convey female empowerment – better than nothing, I suppose, but odd in a film that is trying to make us admire Bella for the restraint she shows as a newborn.

Fortunately, the aimless love story of the first act is eventually supplanted by something resembling a plot when the Volturi find out about Bella and Edward’s daughter Renesmee. Vampire children being verboten, this means war, and the Cullen clan gather friends and allies to face the coming threat.

One of the problems with the earlier TWILIGHT films was their weak answer to the old dramatic question: “What’s at stake?” At first the stories tended to be about being the girl who got to date the cutest guy in class (even if “cute” meant weird hair and pale complexion). Later, the sequels trended toward having both the vampire and werewolf clans risking their lives to protect Bella, the outsider human, who never really did anything to warrant the kind of personal sacrifice everyone was willing to make on her behalf. With THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 2, there is at last a sense that the stakes have been raised, that the crime (or what the Volturi perceive as a crime) of Renesmee’s existence puts the Cullen family in jeopardy and forces a situation in which the characters must take a stand.

Vampires and werewolves unite against the common enemy.

This leads to a pretty decent if somewhat cornball showdown in the snow. THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 2 plays with the all-bets-are-off quality of a final chapter, in which characters will not necessarily survive, because there is no need to keep them alive for subsequent installments. This helps overcome the fait accompli attitude of the series, in which it was always assumed that Bella and Edward’s love would overcome all obstacles, and thus one feels a twinge of something resembling uncertainty if not outright suspense when the characters put their lives on the line. The battle even manages to whip up a little bit of the passion missing from the love story: with beloved characters risking death and dismemberment, for once the film for once engenders a little emotion instead of just expecting the audience to supply it on their own.

Not everything is wonderful. Although it makes a kind of plot-sense to have Jacob ditch the battle so that he can get Renesmee to safety, it feels wrong; he should be in the thick of it with everyone else. Also, Bella’s super-strength is conveniently forgotten when the Cullens face off with the Volturi. Instead, Bella has developed the ability to shield herself and her friends from the magical powers of their enemies. It’s a nice way to make her seem important without giving her much of anything to do except stand around and stare. Which is a rather dangerous gambit in this case: trying to convey psychic powers through facial expressions is a challenge that has defeated far more experienced actors than Stewart.

Nevertheless, the action pays off nicely, with multiple gruesome deaths on both sides, including more severed heads than the entire series to date. Along the way, there is a good bit with an elder vampire, apparently tired of life, who simply accepts death rather than defend himself.* All of which leads to a decently realized twist ending (SPOILER: You’ve seen the surprise before if you have seen SAVAGES.) There is also a nice montage over the credits, showcasing all the major players form this and the previous films – a sort of moving-picture photo album that allows the fans to have one last look at their cherished characters.

Michael Sheen as Aro

As before, most of the cast members act like kids dressing up for a costume party; their photogenic faces and melodramatic posturing seldom convey the sense that an immortal being lurks beneath the youthful facade. The main exception is Michael Sheen as Aro, who does the requisite bad-guy villain shtick but also seem genuinely delighted by his own telepathic powers, approaching each new psychic contact like a kid in a candy store.

Also impressive is Lee Pace (PUSHING DAISIES) in a small supporting role as Garrett, an ally of the Cullens, whose swagger and panache are so impressive in his introductory scene that you wonder why he isn’t the star. Unfortunately, Condon relegates him to the sidelines for most of the remaining running time, lest he steal the show from Robert Pattinson, who never really comes alive until the final confrontation finally juices a little righteous anger from him.

Billy Burke gets a few last laughs as Bella’s father (he has been one of the consistently good, if little used, facets of the series). Taylor Lautner gets to take off not only his shirt but also his clothes in a faux-homoerotic moment (he’s really just getting ready to shape-shift, you see) that feels like Condon reaching back to his work in KINSEY, if only for a laugh.

On the other hand, there are no Woody Allen-inspired jokes about Jacob imprinting on a newborn babe, whom he plans to protect through childhood and then mate when she becomes an adult. On the eww-ick scale, that must rank somewhere close to the Bella-Edward romance, which when you stop to think about it, is really about some really old guy lusting after a high school chick.

In a film at least nominally about immortality, it is worth considering that we tend to think of film itself as enduring through the ages – in a sense, immortal. But this is not quite correct. Although a film may endure as a thing in and of itself (whether on celluloid or transferred to some digital medium), the actual experience of watching film is transitory. Yes, you can watch a film again, but it’s like watching home movies of your wedding: the event itself happened only once, in a past that is receding ever father away, and the video record is just a way of reliving memories, not of reliving the event itself.

Of course, there are classic movies that endure from one generation to the next, because they have some kind of quality that is universal or at least not specific to a particular era. THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 2 is unlikely to fall into this category, but at the present moment in time that is irrelevant; what matters now is the experience of watching the film, not whether it will endure afterward. That communal experience, of joining with a tribe of like-minded individuals to experience something like a rite of passage, is what the TWILIGHT films provide to their audience.

In a culture that offers few formal rituals to help adolescents mark their passage into adulthood, THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 2 fills a void. It satisfies yearnings. It provokes debates (even if the subject is as trivial as Team Edward versus Team Jacob). It provides raw material on a simple level that young minds can process as something that speaks to their needs and concerns. So, though it may not be great art, or enduring, it is, in some undeniable sense, valid.

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 2 (Summit Entertainment, November 16, 2012). Directed by Bill Condon. Screenplay by Melissa Rosenberg, based on the novel Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer. Cast: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Ashley Greene, Jackson Rathbone, Kella Lutz, Nikki Reed, Billy Burke, Chaske Spencer, Mackenzie Foy, Maggie Grace, Michael Sheen, Dakota Fanning, Lee Pace.

FOOTNOTE:

• Unfortunately, we know he’s old because he looks old, which makes no sense in the context of ageless vampires. It’s another of many signs that no one involved with THE TWILIGHT SAGA has really thought the whole vampire thing through – it would never occur to the filmmakers that the most world-weary vampire might be the most youthful-looking, while one who appeared much older might actually be the baby of the group.