'Twilight' Needs A Stake Through Its Heart

by Brett Parker

Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight novel is a book with millions of devoted fans, mostly teen girls and their mothers, who’ve camped out in all night lines to attend midnight showings of the highly anticipated film adaptation. I am the furthest thing from one of those fans. Truth be told, I didn’t even know the novel existed until the film adaptation’s teaser trailer hit the net and stirred up a fan frenzy. I walked into this film knowing very little about it (the ideal way to see a movie) and was very curious to see what all the hype was about. If you want an outsider’s opinion about this phenomenon, I’m your man!

So you already know that teen girls are drooling over this flick. So what does a grown man like myself think? Unfortunately, I was underwhelmed. Twilight takes on two romantic genres that are usually rather difficult to pull off well: the angst-ridden teen kind and the vampire kind. The film comes up short on both accounts. We get the sense that the film cares more about creating durable pop that plunging to the dramatic depths of the film’s imaginative ideas.

As the film opens, we meet Bella (Kristen Stewart), a teenage girl who is leaving behind her mother and step father in Arizona to go live with her father in Washington. Bella’s father (Billy Burke) is the Chief of Police in the small town of Forks, a cloudy country town overflowing with kooky, unsettling characters. Bella goes through the normal motions of being the new girl at school and even develops a crush on the local pretty boy, Edward (Robert Pattinson).

Edward is a strange fellow. He acts like he physically can’t be around Bella. His skin is bright-white pale and he never eats anything. One day, he saves Bella from a car accident with Superman-like speed and strength. What’s this guy’s deal? Why, he’s a vampire, of course! Forks is a town that’s so cloudy, sunlight is easy to avoid. So Edward and his family of Vampires live comfortably in town, feeding on the blood of animals in an attempt to be civilized vampires. Edward is wildly attracted to Bella yet has powerful urges to suck her blood. Bella is attracted to the unique, outsider quality Edward obviously exudes and she seems turned on by the idea of being devoured by the one you love. Ah, young romance!

I remember when John Travolta was on Inside the Actor’s Studio and he explained how he turned down a vampire movie, stating “I care as much about vampires as I do about redoing this carpet.” I think I’m kind of with him on that. I’ve always found werewolves and ghosts more interesting, I guess. Don’t get me wrong, there’s definitely been some fascinating works revolved around bloodsuckers. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is, of course, a masterwork. Interview with the Vampire was a thoughtful study of the species. Twilight does nothing to alter my mixed feelings about these creatures. If anything, the vampires presented here discard traditional, more logical rules about Vampires and embrace more absurd and pointless ones. Sunlight doesn’t kill them, they can see themselves in mirrors, and garlic and stakes never get any mention. But hey, these vampires have heightened agility, mental telepathy, and a love for baseball! Does that make them more interesting? Hardly.

Twilight is a story that seems built on romantic steam yet you won’t find much of it here. Camera angles are suggestive and the actors labor hard at penetrating stares yet seething sensuality and lustful tensions are lacking in power here. Entertainment Weekly just named Out of Sight the sexiest movie ever made. Now that movie knew how to highlight sexiness between two opposite forces. Kristen Stewart is an attractive and wholesome gem as Bella, yet Robert Pattinson fails miserably in the role of Edward. To watch his performance is to watch a chorus line of heartthrob acting clichés. It feels like Pattinson tries unconvincingly to evoke that James Dean-Lost Boy style of youthful anguish, fumbling with it constantly. He acts more constipated than conflicted. His look for the role is a miscalculation, resembling that of an Abercrombie model. It would make more sense for a teenage vampire to exude a Johnny Depp-style ruggedness.

Director Catherine Hardwicke is a filmmaker with a vivid eye for stories about young people, treating them with a rare grace and dignity. She’s most famous for her gritty and honest Thirteen, yet it’s her work on Lords of Dogtown that’s resembled here. That film also looked at a grand troupe of offbeat teenage characters in an unconventional plot. The characters in Lords of Dogtown were cool and relatable while the characters in Twilight are enigmatic and preposterous. Hardwicke labors away to make the film good-looking and heartfelt, but the plot at hand is to too bizarre for her to master. It’s hard to bring youthful honesty to a situation so absurdly supernatural. Perhaps an experienced sci-fi or horror director could’ve made us care more.

Of course Hardwicke brings a bottom-line efficiency to the material that I’m sure will please most fans. She treats the material as seriously as one could treat a teen romance and the film is spared from resembling a TV Family Channel drama. I haven’t heard any complaints from devoted female fans yet. It’s certainly a watchable movie, it’s just too coy about some of its bigger ideas. Would Vampires really look at us as both food and romantic objects? Could a teen girl really feel true love for a boy who watches her in her sleep and ponders the thought of killing her? Would teenage Vampires really subject themselves to high school classes for hundreds of years, forever and ever? You won’t find full closure on these questions here.

So if you want a romantic, observant, sexy, and funny tale of mythic creatures dealing with teenage angst, skip Twilight and rent Teen Wolf. I’m serious. Sure, it’s a silly 80s comedy, but it honestly achieves what Twilight sets out to do a hell of a lot better! Is that cool or sad?