Twilight

Tween-scream torpor does nothing to surprise

By Harry Vaughn

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Twilight is a poorly directed, lazily shot, half-heartedly acted tale of vampires-as-metaphor for repressed sexuality set in permanently cloudy rural Washington. There is nothing exceptional about director Catherine Hardwicke's execution; in fact, Twilight feels like a cardboard ABC Family film injected with a handful of embarrassingly amateurish shots of vampire teens jumping between trees and lustfully gazing at their clueless high school classmates.

It's as if Hardwicke shot the film with as little money as her 2003 indie flick Thirteen, but attempted to pass Twilight off as a big-budget thriller filled with gravity-defying sequences that shamelessly echo the striking Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Sorry, Hardwicke, but small-town Washington ain't ancient Beijing, and nothing about Twilight feels appropriate for the big screen.

Then again, I'm not a 12-year-old girl and I have no interest in watching vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) eye-fuck the shit out of little Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), the woefully unengaged protagonist of what is basically a soft-core porno for frustrated teens.

Adapted from the bestselling novel by Stephenie Meyer, Twilight milks the vampire allegory of longing for all it's worth. When Edward, one of many blood suckers who live amongst the students at school, spots Bella walking into class, he shoots her an erotic glare so absurdly over-the-top, the entire theater burst into laughter. Bella, however, returns his Skinemax stare with an equally foolish glance of sudden eroticism and passion.

That's about all that happens for the first hour and 15 minutes. Other less-friendly vampires eventually come out near the end and attempt to eat the emaciated Bella (of all the girls in Washington state, they want to chomp on the 80-pound Stewart?), but Edward ends up saving the day and opts to actually kiss her on the lips.

I'm all for exploitative vampire flicks (True Blood being an especially terrible example), but without any real payoff, Twilight's stuck with no story, little conflict and a massive case of blue balls that leaves everyone, except those squealing tweens, frustrated.

TWILIGHT

RATED | PG-13

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