
I realise I'm in danger of losing a large chunk of whatever little geek cred I had in the first place, but I have to confess that I thought
Twilight was pretty good.
All the raging controversy and backlash across the interwebs had piqued my interest in this film, which probably would have passed under my radar normally as "a kid's film".
And that's what it is: a 12-certificate (
in the UK) child-friendly vampire love story.
I'd been thinking of renting it from Blockbusters for ages, but then came across a copy in the HMV sale the other day for little more than it would have cost me to rent it for just one night.
If you're a hardcore vampire nut I can see there's a lot to dislike in it, but this film isn't really for you... it's for teen girls and emo boys who aren't old enough for the blood and guts of a real vampire film (
or True Blood).
There's actually a surprising amount going for
Twilight, anchored as it is around the two strong central performances of the young lovers Bella (Kristen Stewart) and brooding 'vegetarian' vampire (
like Count Duckula), Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson).
When her mum decides to go "on the road" with her new baseball-playing hubby, Bella moves from sunny Arizona to the dull and overcast small town of Forks, Washington, to be with her dad, the town's chief of police.
Starting at a new school, she quickly befriends a decent group of people but is drawn towards the mysterious outsider Edward Cullen - and his clique of equally pale and insular fellow Cullens (
all adopted children of a local surgeon).
Edward, initially, appears to spurn Bella, but she eventually discovers this is because he is afraid of losing control of his animalistic, murderous vampire nature. He is drawn to her because, while he is a telepath, he is unable to read her thoughts - an obvious reversal of the Sookie-Bill dynamic in
True Blood (
the first Sookie Stackhouse novel was published four years before the first Twilight book hit the shelves in 2005).
The central human/vampire romance however is convincing and develops at a believable pace, although Bella's decision to not run screaming for the hills when she discovers Edward is a blood-sucking vampire definitely smacks of hormones overruling the head.
All is going smoothly, with Bella and the secret family of vamps, until a murderous trio of hostile vampires breeze into town and start feeding on the locals - much to the annoyance of Edward's kin.
If you can get round the fact that vampires are, for all intents and purposes, serial killers and mythological bogeymen, and this film - and presumably the books they were based on - has stripped them of all their traditional weaknesses and turned them into unstoppable, Michael Jackson-pale, brooding superhumans.
There's none of this 'needing to invite them into your house', 'keep them away from mirrors' malarky and forget about sunlight making them burst into flames, all it does in the
Twilightverse is make vamps "sparkle" (
and supposedly more attractive to humans)... which is pretty lame.
All power and no weaknesses makes the vampire lifestyle of
Twilight rather appealing though and Edward's whining to Bella that he is a "monster" and that she shouldn't dream of becoming like him seems rather hypocritical as the way vamps are set up here there doesn't appear to be any drawbacks to getting your fang on.
But this gratuitous disregard for vampire tradition aside,
Twilight is a surprisingly inventive, interesting and engaging teen movie.
To be honest it's probably easier to stomach if you pretend they are saying "demon" or some other monster whenever anyone uses the word "vampire".
It's quite simply done - they don't even appear to have fangs, anyway!
The first half-hour or so of the movie, in particular, in the build-up to Bella discovering Edward's secret is very engrossing and even once the romance blooms it's nowhere near as sickly and insipid as I feared.
Later on there's a great pivotal scene where Bella joins Edward and his family playing baseball in a thunderstorm, which was not only visually interesting but also sets up the moment when the "good" vampires cross paths with the "evil, trouble-making" vampires and spark off the final act conflict.
I'd say if you've been wavering about seeing this, go in with an open mind and prepare to be pleasantly surprised.
Twilight basically removes the whole "creature of the night" aspect of vampires; cherrypicking random traits and ideas from a variety of other sources and downplays the more horrific elements to warrant the low age certificate.
It's not great cinema or even wholly original but, as a different spin on the 'vampire' archetype, I enjoyed it for what it was and I think, if you give it a chance and can forget about other vampire representations in the media for a couple of hours, so will you.