Weird combination of love and dread
Why do teen and young-adult viewers get turned on by vampire and werewolf romances? We suspect there’s a strong streak of forbidden and even kinky eroticism laced into the equation, a combination of love, lust, danger and even death, all hurtling pell-mell to achieve the ultimate cinematic “O,” as in – no, not Oprah Winfrey.
Are we barking up and at the wrong werewolf? One man’s vamp is another man’s vampire, and Bloody Mary is the season’s crimson cocktail of choice – sip, sip, hooray!
Uh, where were we?
Our attention is wandering, because we’ve just come, numb and cinematically stoned, out of the first screening of “Breaking Dawn, Part 1,” the final chapter in the “monstrously” successful “Twilight” film series. As we stagger out, our viewing gangmates look at each other and rhetorically wonder, “What was that all about?”
Good question. On point of actual plotting and character development, the answer is: Very little. Edward (Robert Pattinson) and Bella (Kristen Stewart) are finally married, they make “dangerous” love, Bella very quickly gets pregnant, her speedily impending delivery endangers her life, Edward feels terribly guilty, Jacob (the other man in her life, played by Taylor Lautner) is enraged, Bella dies – or, does she?
That’s it. The rest of the production film time is filled with long and languorous scenes that strive to sustain the vampire film type’s weird (but, for some, hypnotic) combination of love and dread. They don’t mind all of the stretch marks and blanks that aren’t ever filled – but, for viewers who want more unity, logic and empathetic resonance in the movies they watch, the film is a, that’s it, numbing viewing experience.
Obligation
As the story’s human protagonist, Stewart has the thespic obligation to generate the empathy required to make the movie resonate with its audience. But, all she does is look alternately clueless and twitchy, as if she were having to perplexedly contend with – no, not the love of her unnatural life – but, a bad case of the hives.
To be sure, the acting challenge of making love for a vampire real in this day and age would daunt even the best actresses. But, instead of giving it a good try, Stewart avoids it by just going all twitchy and bewitchy.
As a result, when she finally twitches her last, we feel, not grief, but a sense of relief, because we’ve been put out of our misery.
For his part, Pattinson has a less difficult thespic row to hoe – all he has to do is look believably “vampiric,” and his thick, pasty-white makeup conveniently does most of the job for him in that regard.
The most inept lead performance in turned in by Lautner as the werewolf. He looks the part, but fails to remind himself that the role has a human side to it, as well!
The film’s plus points are its occasionally gorgeous and “beautifully scary” visuals. But, even this virtue is sadly voided by the clumsy way that the werewolf scenes are digitally actualized and staged.
Well, there’s one more film to go before the “Twilight” saga finally sags to its bloody end. But, with Stewart and company still on board, that “final-final” film’s denouement appears to be – similarly dire.
