The Twilight saga was a mᴀssive hit among teen audiences in the early 2010s, and for good reason. The five-movie franchise follows a young Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) after she moves to live with her father Charlie (Billy Burke) in the small town of Forks, and becomes entangled in the dangerous world of Twilight’s strange cast of characters. With a predominant focus on the romantic love triangle between Bella Swan, the vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), and the werewolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), the Twilight movies were a box office hit for teen audiences, despite being panned by critics.

As a result of its commercial success, Twilight became one of the best examples of romantic vampire movies. While most depictions of vampires exist in a horror setting, with the creatures proving bloodthirsty and terrifying, Twilight tames this perception with its simplistic, age-appropriate romantic storyline. For that same reason, the franchise has a divisive reputation – the Twilight saga has a 39.4% Tomatometer and 64.6% Popcornmeter on average – as critics often disagree with the films’ vampire choices. However, if Twilight was actually centered around Charlie Swan instead of Bella, the entire saga would actually have been a horror movie.

Twilight Was Never Really Supposed To Be A Horror

Edward & Bella’s Love Story Is The Main Focus

While vampires are often synonymous with the genre, Twilight was never supposed to be a horror. From the beginning, vampires are shown to be clever and predatory hunters in Twilight. This is teased in Twilight’s opening scene deer catch, Victoria and her group’s hunting activities in Forks, and the Volturi’s ever-looming presence around the Cullen family. This perspective sets the stage for a possible horror-based vampire story, but it never really follows. Instead, all five Twilight movies mainly focus on Edward and Bella’s love story, and Jacob’s pining, with Edward’s “creepy” vampire mannerisms being portrayed as inherently and innocently romantic.

However, while Twilight’s sparkling vampires don’t do the franchise any favors in instilling fear, they can be quite scary. Both Laurent and James are very calculated individuals, and even Edward isn’t immune to being creepy, stalking Bella and watching her sleep. Additionally, the unprecedented strength and detached violence shown by both vampires and wolves demonstrates just how powerful they are, and Edward and Jacob’s strength impacting Bella is a common worry. Yet, Twilight never truly leans into its horror elements. However, if the Twilight movies were told from a different character’s perspective, they would have a much more sinister tone.

The Twilight Saga Was A Horror Movie For Charlie Swan

Bella’s Behavior Is Extremely Concerning From Charlie’s POV

There are a few reasons why the Twilight movies have not aged well, and the main one is due to Charlie Swan. As Bella’s father and Forks’ chief of police, Charlie plays a pivotal background role throughout the Twilight saga, supporting Bella and attempting to rekindle their relationship. Consequently, Billy Burke’s character has become a fan-favorite. However, when you rewatch the movies from Charlie’s point of view, the entire Twilight saga is actually a horror movie, as Charlie is a struggling father who slowly loses his daughter to an obsessive relationship, while strange and violent things happen around him.

In Twilight and Twilight: Eclipse, Charlie’s friends, Waylon Forge and Harry Clearwater, are killed by Victoria (indirectly, for Harry). Alongside these personal deaths, Charlie also has to deal with multiple peculiar cases of missing persons and murders in Forks, which are all secretly due to vampire activity in the area. However, as if the local crimes aren’t scary enough, especially considering his somewhat estranged daughter is now primarily his responsibility for the first time in years, Bella starts getting involved with Edward and the Cullen family, who are notoriously outsiders in the town, and it all goes downhill for Charlie.

Bella and Edward’s Twilight love story is sweet from Bella’s perspective, but for Charlie, Edward’s strange obsessive behavior is utterly concerning, especially when Bella becomes codependent, developing depression and nightmares in Edward’s absence. Furthermore, Bella constantly gets hurt or ill while in Edward’s care, after running away from Charlie. She even ends up in hospital after her “breakup” with Edward and argument with Charlie in Twilight. Yet, the situation gets worse with Twilight: Breaking Dawn, as Bella suddenly becomes deathly ill (a fake story to hide her pregnancy and impending vampirism), before leaving Charlie in the dark with no updates.

Alongside the shock of seeing Jacob’s wolf form, when Charlie reunites with Bella, she introduces his new rapidly-aging granddaughter, a child she secretly adopted while she was “dying.” While viewers know Bella’s actions are justified, from Charlie’s perspective, Bella is erratic. Throughout Twilight, Charlie watched his daughter seemingly suffer with Edward for two years, getting hurt, isolating herself, impulsively marrying, and then adopting a strange child, without knowing the full story. Therefore, it’s hard to see Twilight the same way again after realizing Charlie’s horror movie perspective, especially knowing Bella will eventually leave him once again to hide her vampirism.