120 minutes

In theaters November 21, 2008

Rating: PG-13, Drama

As this romantic vampire drama fades into memory, it's easy to see why the essential target audience -- young women and girls -- is expected to respond to it.

Twilight casts quite a spell.

Screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg's faithful adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's book -- the first in a series of four supernatural horror/romance novels for young adults -- explores our fascination with death and mortality and presents the vampire/mortal tug-of-war as an apt metaphor for adolescent sexual anxiety.

Seventeen-year-old Bella Swan, played by Kristen Stewart, moves from Phoenix to the small, gloomy town of Falls, Washington in the rainy Pacific Northwest and, from the first moment she spies him from across the crowded cafeteria on her first day of school, she falls big-time for the handsome, brooding Edward Cullen, played by Robert Pattinson.

Innocent Bella is lovestruck, experiencing animal attraction for the first time.

Edward just happens to be a vampire, a member of a family of you-know-what's who are virtual vegans -- they drink animal blood as a way of avoiding the need to acquire human blood.

As for Edward, the guy in him yearns for this gal. So does the vampire in him, but in an entirely different way. But he resists all -- that is, both -- of his impulses.

Director Catherine Hardwicke (Lords of Dogtown, The Nativity Story), as she did in the brilliant Thirteen, once again captures the teen experience by telling her story from Bella's point-of-view, using extensive voiceover narration to do so, and using a slow build to establish the real-world setting to play off.

She also does a remarkable job of establishing and then sustaining the mood, as well as a remarkable level of intimacy and intensity, from the intriguing opening to the satisfying ending.

Her romance/horror piece has its share of action, much of it gravity-defying and all of it adroitly choreographed, but Hardwicke is much more interested in the romantic and coming-of-age thrusts than the generic combat.

Stewart gives a rock-solid central performance, capturing Bella's longing, her vulnerability, her toughness, and her recklessness, And she's well-matched with Pattinson, who plays Edward as somewhat of a manic depressive.

So is this a fatal attraction? Well, there are certainly passion and danger in the air during this tortured, literally- life-or-death romance, but some kind of happy ending may still be in the offing.

Will this genre hybrid knock 'em undead? Probably. And if it does, the inevitable sequel will have been set up nicely by Twilight's last gleaming.

Hey, come to think of it, that makes two vampire flicks in two weeks. Hmm: a trend. Of course, there's a big difference between Let the Right One In, last week's chilly horror thriller, and this unorthodox, forbidden-fruit romance. But each works in its own way.

Yes, Twilight reminds us, it can suck to be a vampire. But our fascination with watching one operate remains in our blood.