Great review. I actually liked the movie. Never read the books, kinda liked the first movie too.
Perhaps it's the music (at least they compile a decent soundtrack), the cinema experience (I actually enjoy beeing in a screaming, swooning theater - I watch smart movies at home), the cinematography (far from amateurish), the effects, the cast...
I mean, it's one of the weakest stories I've ever watched, but assembled in a quality infrastructure. Which makes it TRAGIC (and probably inspires so many haters), but people would have to be blind to miss the potential - practically everyone working on the film, the actors, the crew, the director, made a decent effort. Which cannot be said for the author.
I was entertained, but 50% of the fun was the moviegoer crowd and all the swoon/boo/sigh/laughing material that was thrown our way. It was actually quite smart to tailor the movie to maximize the impact in a theater (but it may be just me - I had fun with a hundred screaming pre-teens on a midnight showing of My Bloody Valentine).
I think it would make a good monster movie. The fight choreography is okay, the effects look fake, but work well, etc. Sure, it would be an Underworld clone, but I've seen much worse concepts brought to the screen as "monster-movies."
Also, it's obvious in some scenes that it would also make a great teenage romance flick. Not exactly Mean Girls, but it can be funny and with spontaneous dialogue, the cast is perfectly suited to appeal to a junior audience, and they certainly show talent. But then the characters start the paranormal talk, the awkwardly long romantic scenes with practically Square-Enix ambiguous undefined half-sentence dialogue. No amount of talent can win you an Oscar with writing that atrocious.
All in all, an entertaining mess with bad concepts and ham-fisted execution, but apart from the story that believes us all to be idiots, it's not handled badly. It's more like seeing an abomination like Plan 9... but then you notice that it's filmed with skill, talent and effort, which actually drives me nuts.
Everyone here hates it for the inane dialogue, the outright ridiculous love scenes, the stupid characters, raping the vampire myths, the fanbase, etc. I haven't really heard anyone complain that it was shot badly, that the presentation was crap, that they made cheap sets, a horrible soundtrack, bad editing or anything similar. So, it's bad because it's brainless? I agree. But how hypocritical is that coming from a subculture that values gameplay mechanics, the sophistication of pixels on a screen, sound quality, exploitative reward-based progression and cheap gimmicks over and beyond story and character development and consistency. We've got our Twilights and New Moons in the form of Gears of War and its ilk, but we call them our "guilty pleasure," not "teeny bopper crap." Cute.