twilight

Twilight, the movie based on the first book of the same name by bestselling author Stephenie Meyer, explores the very compelling issue of love between a punk girl and an undead hunk.

Seventeen-year-old Bella Swan, a hipster girl who operates on the fringe of the social scene in her sunny Arizona high school, is forced to move to Forks, Wash. Perpetually covered in mist, the small town is the perfect roost for vampires.

Twilight's main vampire, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) is a creepy, designer-clothes wearing bloodsucker. Edward and his equally pale and beautiful siblings capture the attention of Bella as she tries to penetrate the mystery surrounding their kind. It doesn't take long before Cullen and Bella grow close, and the Cullen family (complete with a vampire-doctor father and a stay-at-home mother) invites her into their home. The movie progresses as a typical love story until a rival gang of vampires appears, setting up a fight of supernaturally corny proportions.

Anticipating an adolescent audience fascinated with the otherworldly, director Catherine Hardwicke takes every chance to focus the camera on the pale-faced vampires to the point of seeming gimmicky. Unfortunately, neither the actors' lackluster performances nor the cheesy special effects justify such attention. The movie woefully falls flat on several occasions (the biggest example is when the vampire family plays baseball in an abandoned meadow during a thunderstorm to the tune of Muse's "Supermassive Black Hole").

And ultimately, there really just isn't much substance to this movie. Twilight is aimed at a clear subsection of the movie-going audience, and for its target group, Twilight will find success. But for everyone else, it just isn't worth it.