Movie Review: Twilight
Twilight (2008)–*1/2
It’s hard being a vampire who is forever 17. An eternity of teen angst is worse than hell. The not being like all the other kids…ever. The bemoaning what you are. And if all the other vampires in your nest are paired off, all you really want is to find someone who gets you. So hard.
Twilight, the adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s uber-popular teen vamp romance novel, is the vampire movie John Hughes would have made. It isn’t much of a horror picture, letting the most unsettling moments occur when the undead boy romances the human girl. I say unsettling because awkward just doesn’t accurately describe the level of creepiness surrounding the male protagonist. And that’s a stake through the heart of this teen romance.
Bella (Kristen Stewart), the palest girl in Phoenix, gets shipped to live with her dad in Washington state when her mom decides to travel with Bella’s minor league baseball playing stepfather. Life in Washington, with its cloudy, rainy days and uncomfortable interactions with her father, is a far cry from the one she had in Arizona. Bella does however find instant acceptance into the Degrassi gang at her new school.
Unfortunately for the boys in the little group, one of the mysterious Cullen kids, Edward (Robert Pattinson), catches Bella’s eye. Edward, likewise, is immediately taken by Bella. He craves her in a way no human could (that urge to drink her blood and all), which disarms and excites Bella. When she finds out what Edward is and listens to him brood about it a bit, she falls madly in love.
I guess love works in mysterious ways. It’s hard to believe Bella ever falling for a guy who compares the her unique scent to a drug. It’s like heroine, he tells her. Ugh. Watching Edward woe Bella is like watching a home schooled guy ask a girl out on a date when he finally goes to away college. And when Edward appears in Bella’s bedroom to ogle her while she sleeps, hegives me the same uneasy feeling I have every time I listen to Clay Aiken’s “Invisible.” Vampires have never been less sexy.
Twilight not only succeeds in castrating the undead, but it also successfully de-fangs them. I can’t think of another vamp picture that waited until the film’s final moments to show a little blood. And the film creates it’s own ridiculous mythology, where vampires sparkle like they are covered in pixie dust when exposed to the sunlight. There’s no burning up. There’s no melting down. For the Cullen family, the vampire Brady Bunch, it makes the dreary Pacific Northwest an ideal place to make a life. For the audience, it’s just another laughable moment in a movie that’s heavy on the cheese.
Sure, there are bad bloodsuckers in Twilight, but Catherine Hardwicke, who is best known for directing the fierce mother-daughter drama Thirteen, gives the dubious teen romance and the female protagonist more attention than she does the film’s darker elements. Generally speaking, that’s what Hardwicke is good at, but in this case, source material is source material. If Hardwicke couldn’t tap into the logic behind Bella’s absurd attraction to Edward (who the girls behind me in the theater accurately described as a “creeper”), then no one could.
Twilight, starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke, Nikki Reed and Cam Gigandet, and directed by Catherine Hardwicke, is in theaters now.
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