Soul sucking

Twilight is a movie where everybody mopes. Moping high school kids in the parking lot, or in diners eating French fries with their moping fathers while forlorn vampires walk around in the daylight … moping. Mope, mope, mope. Good Christ, I just wanted somebody to rip a throat out or something to break up the monotony.

Yeah, I know, it’s a vampire movie for young adults, so throat ripping is forbidden. But really, why make a vampire movie where you can’t see any real vampire action? It’s like making a Star Wars with no space battles, or a Jaws movie without any shark attacks. It’s boring on a level that is unforgivable. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was on TV, and there was far more scary mayhem and action on that show.

The film is based on a series of novels by Stephenie Meyer, and if the movie is anything like her books, she must be one lousy-assed writer. It tells the story of Isabella “Bella” Swan, played by Kristen Stewart as if she just drank a bottle of Tanqueray and chased it with four six packs of Pabst Blue Ribbon. She’s usually a magnetic actress, but she’s lost in a drama desert with no canteen in this one, and she can’t find her way out.

Bella moves from Phoenix to be with her lethargic dad (Billy Burke) in Forks, Wash., where he’s a depressed sheriff. After being a loner in Phoenix, she’s sort of the big story in the sparsely populated town, and she attracts the attention of both the living and the undead. No wonder the undead would buzz around her—she plays the role of a high school senior with all the nuance of a zombie.

Still, her performance outshines that of Robert Pattinson, who plays lead vampire Edward Cullen. Edward is Bella’s lab partner, and he doesn’t like her at first because, well, he wants to drink her blood, and he finds this bothersome. His family of vampires only eats animals, but Bella has him thirsting for human blood, which pisses him off. How dare she? Still, Bella is hot, so he falls in love, which poses the dilemma of loving somebody you literally want to eat on a cracker.

Pattinson, all pale-faced with impossible eyebrows, is a drag every moment he occupies the screen. It doesn’t help that his character is ridiculous. “Say, I’m a vampire, and a brooder, but I’m totally gorgeous. So … please love me and my big eyebrows back, even though I want to eat you and suck your blood. And, even though I want to eat you and suck your blood, please go to prom with me because I already rented a tux and the deposit is non-refundable.”

Director Catherine Hardwicke, who made a decent debut with Thirteen, has been stinking up cinemas ever since. Apart from a few scenes where Edward runs around and scales a tree or two, the film has no lively passages. A sequence where the vampires play baseball is deadly dull, not to mention stupid. Apparently, vampires can only play baseball in the rain, which means these vampires can pretty much play ball 24/7 because they’re in the Northwest.

Sequels are more than likely. They should can the director right now and get somebody who knows their way around an action sequence. The Twilight franchise certainly has a chance at being cool. I hated the first Harry Potter, but that series has grown into a very durable set of films.

So, for the uninitiated who have never read the books (such as myself), Twilight is the sort of cinematic sludge that will result in hair loss as you frustratingly pull strands from your head whilst watching. As for those of you who love the books, you’ll probably love the movie. It serves its purpose, and its purpose is not to please the likes of me. ‘Cause I don’t get it … I don’t get it at all.