I witnessed the first wave of Twilight obsession as a 14-year-old boy in the 2000s. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that, at the time, I had vowed to always reject it.

I hadn’t witnessed a second of Twilight, yet somehow I knew it was terrible. Received wisdom said Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart couldn’t act, the love story was soppy and lack substance, vampires shouldn’t sparkle, and ‘girly’ interests should be disregarded.

The endless re-reads and re-watches were unlike anything I’d witnessed before. It short-circuited my uncurious, ignorant 14-year-old brain, so I immediately discounted it, performatively boasting about my ignorance whenever it came up.

All five Twilight saga films return to UK cinemas this autumn, marking the 20th anniversary of the first of Stephanie

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