An adaptation of Stephenie
Meyer's insanely popular novel about a tormented teenage vampire and the plucky
heroine who loves him, Twilight has a lot of unattractive baggage for audience
members who haven't already given over their hearts and loins to Meyer's
young-adult series. While the movie attempts to find an compelling middle
ground between gothic supernaturalism and teenage romance, it usually winds up
stumbling into the inane territory implied by both descriptions.
Things start out
promising, when 17-year-old wallflower Kristen Stewart moves from sunny Phoenix
to a rural Washington community where everyone knows everyone's business and it
rains nearly every day. Her unexpected, unwelcome fame at her tiny school and
uncomfortable relationship with her father form a vortex of teenage
awkwardness, something director Catherine Hardwicke manages to frame naturally
and with relative subtlety. As in her directorial debut thirteen, Hardwicke proves adept
at portraying the way teens talk and act in their mundane, day-to-day lives,
and the handheld camera work and gloomy gray setting nicely offset Stewart's
subdued take on teen girldom.
Unfortunately—also
as in thirteen—that
naturalism gives way to melodrama, in this case when devastatingly gorgeous,
uncomfortably intense teenage vampire Robert Pattinson enters Stewart's life.
The pair's early fumblings, before she discovers his undead-ness, are generally
sweet—though heavy on close-ups of Pattinson gazing at Stewart in a
mildly creepy manner—but once the word "vampire" is finally uttered, the
movie screams off into vaguely embarrassing romantic cliché. Cameras pan and
spin overhead as music swells, chests heave, and voices crack with emotion, with
extended scenes where Stewart and Pattinson do nothing but stare intently at
each other.
From there, the only time
the movie deviates from gooey romanticism is during a couple of action
sequences that ramp up the movie's latent vampire tendencies. Most of the
references to Pattinson's supernatural abilities come in frustratingly tiny
doses, like a small display of speed or strength for Stewart's benefit. But two
scenes that find Pattinson teaming up with the rest of his undead
"family"—one to play a super-charged game of baseball, the other to
rescue Stewart from a rogue vampire who doesn't subscribe to the clan's
no-human-blood diet—ratchet up the vampire exploits considerably. While
it's a nice break from all the overwrought sentimentality, these setpieces are
hindered by cheesy CGI effects and unfortunate styling that makes the vampires
look not like impossibly beautiful killing machines, but like a bunch of dorks
who fell into a vat of pancake makeup. As a result, Twilight never manages to strike
the balance between the low-key romance it could be and the action-packed epic
it wants to be.