Star Scene

By Ian Gibson

There is a sort of high-pitched screaming in the air, the collective clamor of a million pubescent fan girls screeching to their little heart’s content over the latest Twilight movie: New Moon. The second release of the four-part series has finally come to theaters on the apex of a year worth of rumors, speculations, whispers, and general marketing mayhem.

Starring the same cast as the original film, New Moon continues the supernatural heartthrob story that made the original Stephanie Meyer books so popular. Kristin Stewart plays badly-named heroine Bella Swan, a girl who finds herself in love with (gasp!) a vampire. Edward Cullen, played by Robert Pattinson, is the aforementioned blood-sucking hunk that is all too eager to poor his heart out to the girl he loves. Alas, like all badly concocted teenage romances, interference must occur in the form of a buff werewolf interloper with a nasty allergy to wearing shirts.

The story suffers from a general implausibility that expands to scar the movie as a whole. Vampires, werewolves, and other fantastical inventions do not serve as the main backbone of the movie but rather the wound by which it perishes. Underneath all the CGI and bodily transformations is a love story that, if left unencumbered by the aforementioned accessories, would flourish brilliantly. Instead, the romance of New Moon is washed out by the vampire obsession it is too eager to pay homage too.

It is this faltering that makes New Moon a truly awful film to watch. The dialogue, though kitschy at points, is capable of pulling the viewer into the romantic intrigue of the plot. But, just when the film starts to gain interest, it heaps upon the screen massive amounts of juvenile pish-posh taken straight from any sub par fantasy novel. There is a constant push-pull relationship between the screen and seat, a jarring sort of affair that is more likely to cause a headache than critical dynamism.

Unfortunately, the best thing that can be said about New Moon is that it is better than the first film of the series, a designation akin to finishing second-to-last in a fairground sack race. This movie stumbles, falters, and ends up flat on its face far short of the proverbial finish line.