As thin as the film's story may be in plenty of places, at least in concept, it juggles many an expendable subplot and many a near-overcomplicated core plot element, and that's respectable, I guess, but too much for this effort to handle without focal unevenness rearing its ugly head into things as the film struggles to find a direction, many of which are either unnecessary or don't really gel with the other paths as well as they should on a tonal level. Pacing problems in storytelling also play a part in thinning out depth and kick, particularly when exposition goes hurried along, sometimes so forcibly that the film crowbars in a quick piece of exposition to keep things tight, which is ironic, because when the film is forcing stuff in, it's usually dragging its narrative out with much too much material to keep up with.
Sorry for this vampire-themed pun, but this very young adult type of fluff piece was never to have all that much "teeth", being promising and all in plenty of places, but sometimes formulaic, as well as consistently thin in dramatic weight to one degree or another, which isn't to say that you can solely blame conceptual shortcomings for preventing this film from being fleshed out all that much.
Don't get me wrong, this film is decent, or at least a whole lot better than "New Moon", but it doesn't "sink its teeth" too deep, being held back, partially by natural shortcomings. Shoot, he's such a big Christian, maybe God is punishing him for selling his soul to a vampire film, or, more likely, Hollywood is punishing him for being a Republican, or, most likely, the Patrick Fugit route is simply a doomed one, because Fugit is barely doing anything, and his first lead role was in one of the greatest doggone films ever made, ever, something that this film is decidedly not. Man, William Miller just cannot catch a break, but hey, I guess he's doing better than Chris Massoglia, who tried to go the way of Fugit and leap right into his first lead role at a very young age, only to go on to do a deleted scene in "Charlie St. Shoot, it's not like the young'uns were going to be sold on Willem Dafoe, because his celebrity is starting to slip, and they certainly weren't going to be sold on Patrick Fugit, because the boy is so destined to be, well, "almost famous" that this was his first major role since his first one, nine years ago, and they ended up sticking him in a supporting role and under a bunch of Lizard Boy makeup, and still fell short at the box office. Reilly isn't especially marketable to the kids.
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Jeez, from the sounds of it, this really should have done well at the box office, but alas, those teenaged boys were having to save their movie money to take their girlfriends to "New Moon", and besides, unless he's a blithering idiot playing off of Will Ferrell, John C. Granted, it didn't fall that short, but they were hoping that this would be the more teen boyish answer to "Twilight" so much that they got the brother of the director of "New Moon" to direct this, and released it a couple of weeks before "New Moon", just in time for Halloween. It's "Twilight" for boys, and apparently that's still not cool enough for boys, because this film unfortunately fell short at the box office.