Is Twilight different from any other vampire story? Not really, except in its rhythms, details, and tone — not to mention a killer soundtrack and images that range from MTV to David Lynch to Caspar David Friedrich. I can't think of many recent filmmakers who have used so many close-ups, long takes on eternally youthful faces of marble perfection, on yearning, intense eyes. It's downright Bergmanesque.
True, it's also borderline kitsch, and the voiceovers from Meyer's dear-diary prose don't help. But Hardwicke pushes the corn to the point of camp and stops just in time to allow a glimpse of majesty, as when Edward whisks Bella up a fogbound mountainside so he can step into a beam of light and reveal what he really is. And what is that? The undead tell no tales.
