Disturbing and Beautiful Teenage Vampires

Rating: 9/10 (13 January 2009)

The first scene of Twilight is as disturbing as it is touching. A boy teenage vampire and a girl teenage vampire meet each other in a graveyard. The boy teenage vampire gives the girl teenage vampire a knowing smirk. The kind of smirk that makes the audience wonder: Are these teenage vampire lovers, perhaps? The sexual tension in the theatre at this moment was palpable.
The hunt begins! The two turn into bats; the girl becomes a pink bat (practical, yes. Realistic, also yes, but perhaps a little too gender normative for my taste). They fly high above the city, performing majestic and graceful swoops while the opening credits roll.
A middle-aged business man is going home after a long day at the office, no doubt. He's talking on his cell-phone, presumably to his wife. Little does he know that he will never see her again.
The teenage vampire bats land on the businessman's shoulders, one on each, and begin shrieking their horrifying bat-shrieks.
"Transform!" the bats shout in unison, allowing them to revert back into their human shape. Then they leap on the man, and devour him with their sharp vampire fangs. The camera is mercifully directed at the ground for this shot, so all we see are shadows and blood splattering.
Although the rest of the film is a somewhat predictable teenage vampire love romp, Director Catherine Hardwick has perfected the tried and true teenage vampire love romp formula.
4Â½ out of 5 stars.
*SPOLIER* Some of my colleagues claim that a mere Wesley Snipes cameo would have been sufficient, and that it didn't make a lot of sense to have him kill off the entire cast in the third act. But to me it makes perfect sense. They are vampires, and so Wesley Snipes needs to kill them. I pose a rhetorical question: How else could it have possibly ended?
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