Movie Review: Twilight: New Moon

The second installment in Stephanie Meyer’s popular vampire re-imagining, now directed by Chris Weitz (About a Boy, The Golden Compass), is only slightly better than the first film. In New Moon, Bella’s has nightmares of growing older as her vampire boyfriend, Edward Cullen, never ages. During a birthday party at Edward’s house (a house hold of vampire’s) Bella accidently cuts her finger (a possible nod to Bram Stoker’s original story). Her finger bleeds, and the Cullen’s find it hard to resist her. Edward soon fears that she is in harm’s way by being with them, so he abandons her. With Edward gone, Bella finds it difficult to carry on a normal life. The loss of Edward is not just emotionally painful but also physically as well. Bella soon finds that by continuously endangering herself, she will have visions of Edward. With Edward gone, Bella’s long time friend Jacob moves closer. A relationship develops, but Jacob also has a secret much like Edward. And with Bella not completely over Edward, a love triangle ensues.

Much of the audience seemed to love the film, and comments were made about how more true to the source New Moon is. In comparison to the first film, New Moon is certainly more cinematic in its screen space and color pallet. There are a lot more reds. Bella is given a shade of complexion to balance against Edward. The first one was also really corny and cheese at times, and that has been brought down a lot in the new film. The story telling has defiantly gotten better.

However, that still doesn’t make for a great film. It seems that New Moon is like The Watchmen, a film adaptation that is so committed to the original source that movie strangles itself and isn’t allowed to breath. The dialogue scenes are very dry in New Moon. The camera doesn’t step back to give breathing room for the actors, and the blocking is the standard wide, medium, close-up – but the camera never falls back to wide. If you think that I am being too critical, please realize that this is an important element in visual story telling. Take note of the dialogue scenes in The Dark Knight and you’ll see an array of camera angel combinations, that are not always the over the shoulder and reverse shots.

One of the better, and more romantic, moments in New Moon is a scene were Jacob and Bella (who are just friends) exit a movie theater. In a wide shot, Jacob (ever so slightly) grabs Bella’s hand, just like any boy would try to do when on a date with a girl. Immediately, a quiver from every girl in the audience shot across the room. However, almost nothing happened in the overly tight and claustrophobic shots of near kisses with the same two characters. Now, this is just the dialogue stuff. In any other scene of the film, the camera is working the screen pallet and does a great job of illustrating long passages of time and slowing down some Werewolf/Vampire fighting scene almost replicating 300.

Though, this movie is a step above the first one, I felt that the first one was a lot more romantic. The romance in this film is nearly dead for the better part of the movie, and barely comes back near the end, like a last minute field goal to win the game. It made me wonder, if perhaps a female director (like before) would have be better at the helm when telling a story about a young girl, from a young girls perspective, and written by a woman. This is one film where I think that more of the poetic narration from the novels should have been have translated to the film. There are small amounts of voice over in this film, and it actually serves its purpose well and could have been implemented more.

This movie by no means sucks, but it isn’t that great either. It is a step above the first film, but not by much.

Grade: C+