Twilight

Stephanie Meyers’s “Twilight” mirrors the age old tale of boy meets girl, but with the boy replaced with a century old vampire and and the girl switched with an angst-ridden teenage emo-child.

The roles of Vampire and Teenage-emo-child are acted out by Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen, and Kristen Stewart as Isabella or ‘Bella. Both actors embrace their roles with the zeal and talent of a middle-school reproduction of “Hamlet”.

The majority of the supporting characters are rather flat as well, maybe this is due to limited talent on actors part or just an abysmal director, but the one character that seemed cinema worthy, James the bad-guy tracker vampire, SPOLIER ALERT!gets about 5 minutes of screen-time then is literally torn into bloody chunks then thrown into a fire. It seems vampires don’t like getting out-acted.

“Twilight” to its credit is a highly stylized movie. There seems to genuine effort put into making the movie match what was depicted in the novel. Then “Twilight” took it a step too far by trying to visually depict  some things that are better left to the imagination. Such as, the vampire’s running, jumping, climbing, flying, talking, walking, and well just about anything as that the fanged hero does.

A semi-avid movie watcher would come to the uncanny realization that they had seen “Twilight” before. Everything about the movie was eerily familair, from the main story of vampire falls in love with a human (“Vampire Hunter D” the movie or the comic “Crimson”), the idea of a vampire surviving on non-human blood (Anne Rice’s Lestat, “Blade” or “Crimson” again) even the main characters names seem cloned from another source (Edward and Bella of “Twilight” versus Ebin and Stella of “30 Days of Night” … coincidence?)

One interesting things about this film is the underlying tone abstinence.

“Twilight” following from Anne Rice’s lead makes “Siring”, when a vampire is created, very sexual and appealing. Meyers piggybacks on this idea by making Edaward unable to “express” himself due to the fear that he would lose control and bite ‘Bella. This makes an interesting statement about teenage sexuality by depicting ‘Bella, the female, as longing for Edward. And Edward, as the male, responsible for restraining himself and ‘Bella. Thereby, preventing the teens from “expressing” and ‘Bella from walking the vampire’s path.

Or maybe I am just reading to much into a silly teen movie. Who knows.

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