Movie Monday: Twilight

Why vampires? And so many of them. My zillions of movies, cable movie package seems to be filled with vampires who live in your home town, or you find along the road or you meet when you decide to go spelunking with or without supplies.

Movies seem to be fixated with vampires and not the Nosferatu-type which you would run from in a heartbeat but the cool dude, the Lothario-type, the sexually desirable hunk. Wait a minute. Could sex be involved in this vampire fixation?

Saying all this, let’s get to my trailer review of the number one box office hit: Twilight. Who said vampires were bad for business.

Twilight: movie review from trailer

Ok, here’s the premise. vampires have lived peacefully among us for centuries. That I didn’t know.

A young boy vampire is in love with a human girl. We know they are in love because she, clad in bikini undies, is kissing him. And, she knows he’s a vampire because the opening dialogue in the trailer is:
She: Your skin’s pale white and ice cold.
He: Say it.
She: Vampire.
He: Are you afraid?
She: No.

She likes him. I guess, for her at least, if you’re good looking and have a pulse, you’re date material.

But all is not happy in this teen vampire paradise. There are bad vampires out there. Voiceover: Some still hunger for blood. (What? Only the bad vampires hunger for blood? Do the good ones all live next to the abattoir?)

We see a bad boy vampire meeting the good boy vampire and his date and the bad boy says: You brought a snack.

(Now, to step aside from my role as movie critic and to speak of screen writing today: Does anybody vet this stuff before the final print? You brought a snack! He’s eying a full grown girl. She’s carrying enough blood calories for a few days. But for the sake of pithiness some screenwriter decided the line had more punch as written.)

Moving along in the trailer, the bad boy vampire has the good boy vampire pinned to a broken mirror. We can see the reflection of both of them in it. Wait another minute! I distinctly remember that Bela Lugosi did not appear in a mirror nor did the vampire in Fright Night. Has vampire lore been turned on its head? What are we to believe?

What I expect from the movie based on the trailer:

Well, the voiceover tells us. The good vampire must battle the bad vampire for “what he desires most”, which is most probably the human girl.

So, I’m expecting a teen love story of human and vampire beings with probably a good amount of action and spooks since this didn't get to be number one as only a love story.

I don’t know if there will be a happy ending. Do vampires have happy endings? I think that the ones who do survive just go on and on and on. Bummer.

Although the topic really isn’t that appealing to me, (I don’t think I had a crush on a vampire as a teen - you never can tell though) if it appeared in the lineup for my big screen TV, I would probably watch it.

Oh, and it’s based on a book.