Twilight Breaking Dawn, the first half of the Snorkels the Vampire Fetus Saga, premiered last week and promptly earned a kajillion dollars, even inspiring some fans to try to drive to the theater drunk and on three tires (probably the coolest thing ever to be associated with Twilight). But drunk chicks playing demolition derby wasn’t the only mayhem Edward’s bed-smashing abstinence sex inspired, apparently the film is also causing seizures.
OBEY MY HYPNO-FETUS.
Several instances of people saying they have developed seizures during the tense birthing scene in “Breaking Dawn: Part One” have been reported. The in-theater seizures, also known as photosensitive epilepsy, are thought to be a result of the bright flashing of red, black and white during the film’s nerve-wracking scene.
That’s the scene that involves Edward having to chew the fetus out of Bella’s womb, by the way. Same thing happened to my cousin, the coyote.
Brandon Gephart and Kelly Bauman had gone to see “Breaking Dawn: Part One” last Friday when Gephart began “convulsing, snorting, [and] trying to breathe,” according to Bauman. He doesn’t remember anything, he says, but soon awoke on the theater floor and was taken out by paramedics. The remainder of the screening was cancelled.
Well that’s one way to get out of sitting through Breaking Dawn with your girlfriend. He probably went with fake seizure only after the “me no speaka English” method failed.
“It’s like a light switch going off, because it hits your brain all at once,” Dr. Michael G. Chez, medical director of pediatric neurology and epilepsy for Sutter Sacramento told CBS 13 in Sacramento, adding that “the trouble with theaters, it’s dark, the lights flashing in there is more like a strobe light.”
Instances of the scene inducing seizures have been reported elsewhere across the country. In Utah, a married couple told ABC-4 in Salt Lake City that bright, graphic scene caused the husband, who doesn’t want to be named for fear he could lose his job, to pass out and led to his entire body shaking.
“I didn’t really remember what happened after that I think I blacked out. According to her, I was shaking and mumbling different noises,” he told ABC-4.
His wife was sitting by his side in the theater.
“He started mumbling and he was blinking on and off with his eyes at that point. I was kneeling in front of him slapping his face,” she said. [ABC]
That second part is a lot funnier if you imagine the person speaking is Taylor Lautner’s acting coach. “I kept slapping him, but all I could get him to do was blink his eyes and mumble different noises. Finally he got agitated and tried to spit at me.”