Rating: MMMM

Review of Twilight first published in January 2009 issue Spark*, the newspaper of Reading University Students’ Union.

Director: Catherine Hardwicke
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Peter Facinelli, Nikki Reed
Running time: 122 mins

Its the same old story: girl moves to new town, meets mysterious (and frightfully good-looking) boy, is fascinated by him, starts to fall in love, finds out he’s a vampire – oh no, wait. This is what Twilight essentially is, a teenage romance, where one of the couple happens to be a vampire. Seventeen year-old Bella Swan (Stewart) moves to the town of Forks, Washington to live with her father. There she meets the enigmatic Edward Cullen (Pattinson), to which there is more than meets the eye. The two share a mutual fascination with each other, however Bella soon learns that Edward is drawn to her by a deep yearning desire to drink her blood.

In the film’s characterisation of Edward, there is more of the ‘tortured soul’ of the vampire (first notably introduced on film by Neil Jordan’s Interview With the Vampire) as we see when Bella expresses her desire for Edward to turn her into a vampire (in order for them to be together), he responds by confessing his hatred for his kind, believing vampires to be “killers” and “monsters”
and wishing never to condemn Bella to a similar fate. The film deviates however, from conventional representations of vampirism by removing the hackneyed anti-vampire weapons of garlic, silver and sunlight, replacing these with “ripping them apart and burning the pieces” (this method is mentioned twice in dialogue and appears to be the only way to destroy the blood-suckers) Sunlight, the age-old bane of the vampire  has the effect of displaying Edward’s skin in all its iridescent glory and therefore bright sunny days are avoided by him and his family in order to remain inconspicuous. The scene where Bella and Edward lie on the forest floor, with Edward’s skin shining and glowing however, (despite purists’ argument that the moment remains faithful to Meyer’s novel) feels forced and artificial – the tinkling shimmering sound effects adding to the scene’s embarrassment.

Coming to Twilight with a knowledge of director Catherine Hardwicke’s previous film Thirteen, you could be forgiven for expecting a similar amount of adolescent sexual indulgence, given Twilight’s subject matter of vampirism. This is sadly absent, with the audience (as was evident from the mutterings of fellow cinema-goers) really wondering when anything of that nature was going to happen. Apparently we have to wait for further films in the franchise for anything remotely sexy to happen between Bella and Edward.

But when the films are as fun as this, I don’t mind waiting. The effects, action and wire-work are good, even if the jumping and flying around at times isn’t exactly subtle. The film’s principle stars are also very good, Stewart in particular giving depth to a role which in the hands of another actress could descend into two hours of looking nervous and tense. Luckily, her performance saves Bella from falling into the damsel-in-distress cliché. Bella is subsequently conveyed as a strong, intelligent young woman. In his early scenes, overnight heartthrob sensation Robert Pattinson (in his biggest role to date) seems to struggle, but as the film progresses he find his feet, giving a convincing performance and looking achingly gorgeous in the process – the moment where he steps out of his car (a Volvo, sadly) and puts on his Ray-Ban Wayfarers with a cheeky grin on his face is worth the ticket price alone.

Rating: MMMM