Vamp angst

Rating: 5/10 (30 November 2008)

Stephenie Meyer's insanely popular novel "Twilight" hits the big screen, dividing moviegoers into a love or hate affair. It certainly finds its way into many fans of the novel, mainly because of the mere sight of its male lead Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). Anyone from the outside looking in might find themselves simply watching an angst-ridden movie tailored for the YouTube generation with blunt metaphors on chastity and forbidden love.
Introvert Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) has just transferred from sunny Phoenix to the perpetually raining town of Forks, Washington in the middle of the semester. She does quickly bond with a group of teens, and later on with Edward, a mysterious handsome guy always hanging out with his foster brothers and sisters and wouldn't mingle with the rest of the school population.
It turns out, he's a vampire, although not of the traditional sort: he does not get destroyed by the sun (he just glimmers in the sunshine), he doesn't hate garlic, does not get killed by being staked on a cross, he doesn't sleep in coffins and he casts reflections. But he craves blood, although because his family are "vegetarians", they don't drink the blood of humans, only animals'. Still, he finds Bella's scent so attractive that he initially fights off his feelings for her until he realizes he can't and they carry on their relationship, which eventually endangers Bella's life from other "non-vegetarian" vampires.
Director Catherine Hardwicke ("thirteen", "Lords of Dogtown", "The Nativity Story"), working on Meliisa Rosenberg's ("Step Up") script, actually starts the film promising enough. Hardwicke's proficiency in making realistic interactions from the daily lives of teens is evident early on, and it's the part of the movie that works. Then things go downhill from there. The script gets confusing with too many characters, dialogs become ridiculously corny and the one-note performances of the leads can't fully support the weight of the middle part. The movie is barely - BARELY - saved by the action scenes in the climax but the visual effects are hampered by the film's relatively low budget.
Without its ties to the novel, "Twilight" would have been just another one of those low-budget movies (i.e. direct-to-video) that regularly make their way to screens in this part of the world. It certainly feels like it. But it doesn't necessarily mean it's abhorrent; it's just that one has to wonder what the fuss was all about.