New Moon (2009)

Director: Chris Weitz
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Ashley Greene, Rachelle Lefevre, Billy Burke, Michael Sheen, Dakota Fanning

SYNOPSIS

The story started in Twilight continues with Bella's romance with vampire Edward causing problems. He doesn't want her to be turned into one of them, but her presences around blood-lusting vampires is causing tension. Edward decides to leave but that only puts Bella in the path of Victoria - who still vows vengeance over her lover's death - and also into the arms of Jacob - Bella's childhood friend who is actually one of a family of werewolves, the vampires' mortal enemy.

REVIEW

It's something of a surprise that I watched this film given a number of factors. One is that I'm a hardcore horror fan, so any attempt to water down or manipulate the genre tends to be annoying - and few come more manipulated than this series, which ignores much of established lore while aiming everything at the teenage love story market. The other is that, as expected, I hated the first film.

There's many reasons for that, but most of them have been repeated on the net ad infinitum - Bella's pathetic need to be controlled by men, the thinly-veiled Mormon propaganda, the sparkly vampires, etc. But, it's enough to put me off ever sitting in front of this series. yet, for various reasons, I found myself coerced into giving this one a shot. You know what? It's not as bad as the original, although you have to slog through a lot of tired and dumb love story to get to the (relatively) good stuff.

Much of the first half of the film is taken up with typical romantic tropes (as well as heavy-handed nudges toward Romeo & Juliet). Bella is afraid of growing old while Edward remains eternally young. His decision to leave is understandable, if astoundingly badly communicated. From there, Bella mopes around literally for months before latching on to Jacob, who then decides (for reasons nakedly obvious in the first film) to dump her as well.

From there, the most pathetic heroine in recent movie history actually starts growing a backbone to some degree. Well, she's been "developing" one during the film since she worked out that doing something stupidly dangerous allows her to see Edward. But, she starts fighting back a little, and then does something proactive when she has a chance to save Edward instead.

Here's where the film gets a little more interested as the mythos of the world is opened up a bit. Vampires apparently have a hierarchy, and a council named Volturi based in what seems to be Italy (kind of) have the power of life and death over vampires. That is, if a vampire breaks certain rules, they kill them. One of the rules is exposing the existence of vampires to the wider world, and Bella has to rush to stop Edward (who though stupidly contrived serious of situations thinks Bella is dead) from doing this to get himself killed.

It's all fairly stupid, of course. Bella is one of the most obnoxiously selfish and stupid characters ever committed to film - not a good sign for our supposed heroine. Edward is as distant as ever (literally this time for much of the movie), and you never really get to see why, exactly, she would choose him over the much more likeable Jacob other than that's what the script says. The "daredevil" aspect is utterly laughable, although not quite as stupid as the vampire baseball in the first movie, and the whole thing ends on a "yep, we're making a sequel" not, though that was of course obvious by this point.

So, not a complete waste of time and the climax is at least interesting, but why this series is so popular escapes me. I might end up watching the next couple of movies just to see if the dark areas I've heard that the novels finally start to contain is translated on screen, but I still have no expectations.

5 / 10