The vampire strikes back

Rating: Null/10 (26 December 2008)

It's not difficult to appreciate, if you have seen the movie, why Twilight has become such a favourite to teenage girls (and their grandmothers, as one critic quips). It is difficult enough to come by a beau that is dashingly handsome. But one that is gentle enough to play the piano beautifully and strong enough to save you from an on-crashing van, with his bare hand! And, in a feat that is very different but just as enchanting as what Clark Kent did to Lois Lane (for those who remember the scene with Margot Kidder and "Can you read my mind"), takes you on a trapeze-like adventure at the top of an impossibly tall pine forest, surveying the immense splendour of the sweeping landscape. Romance at its best vintage.
Although not quite offering the dark, psychological depth of Nosferatu (1922), this vampire story has some special appeal. The vampire family that our young heroine Bella Swan (an excellent Kristen Stewart) stumbles across are "vegetarians", a dubious description for a lifestyle (or should that be "deathstyle"?) of abstinence from human blood, with as substitute animal blood  like surviving on tofu, you get all the nutrition you need but it's never truly satisfying, as the sweetheart Edward Cullen (a good Robert Pattinson) carefully explains. You get the picture.
The love story is sensibly handled. Rather than smothering it with layers of syrup, the effective script simply has her declare in an almost matter-of-course manner, at a most critical moment when he threatens to leave her for her own good, that they are not to live without each other. Simple as that, and directly appealing. Another clever scene is when Bella goes to meet the parents (and relatives). It looks more like an inter-racial relationship than a supernatural romance. The vampire family appears to be more like one from a different ethnic and cultural background than from another world.
But not all vampires are nice guys. There has to be a "non-vegetarian" vampire community, from which the main thriller drama is generated for this first edition of what hopefully will be a long series. Also introduced, but not fully explored, is a third power base, an Indian family, purportedly descended from wolves (think Kate Beckinsale's "Underworld"), arch-enemies of vampires. Can't wait for the sequel "New Moon".