To view our videos, you need to
enable JavaScript. Learn how.
install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now.

Then come back here and refresh the page.

The film's featured attraction is Robert Pattinson, the young British actor who plays Edward Cullen, the dreamy, sculpted hunk of a teen vampire. With pasty skin, red lips, and sanpaku eyes that pop open with a touch of madness, Pattinson has a look so broodingly unearthly it's no wonder he doesn't sprout fangs. His creepy bedroom stare is a special effect all its own.

As a character, Edward is like Heathcliff, Romeo, James Dean, and Brad Pitt all rolled into one: a scruffy-gorgeous bloodsucker pinup who is really an angelic protector.

Bella, played by Kristen Stewart, has come to the small town of Forks, Wash. to live with her police chief father. When she sits next to Edward in biology class, he acts like he's suffering a seizure. But it's only because he can barely control himself around her.

As Bella gets to know him, what's irresistible to her is that he promises not a blood consummation but its very opposite: a refusal to give in to the hunger that tempts him most.

It was a shrewd move to get Catherine Hardwicke to direct "Twilight," because the youthquake specialist who made "Thirteen" and "Lords of Dogtown" treats teen confusion without a trace of condescension. She gets their grand passions and prickly defense mechanisms. Hardwicke has reconjured Meyer's novel as a cloudburst mood piece filled with stormy skies, rippling hormones, and understated visual effects.

As the Kewl Generation damsel waiting to be rescued from her jaded heart, Stewart proves an ideal casting choice, conveying Bella's detachment as well as her need to bust through it.

What Hardwicke can't quite triumph over is the book's lackluster plot. On screen, "Twilight" is repetitive and a tad sodden, too prosaic to really soar. But Hardwicke stirs this teen pulp to a pleasing simmer.