Twilight: New Moon

The Twilight series stumbles along to this, the second bloodless episode of a threatened quartet in exploration of the effect that teen angst and bare male chests has on teenage girls and middle-aged women.

New Moon heralds a change in terms of director after Catherine Hardwicke was jettisoned from the series in the most obvious terms (she allegedly would not have time to start pre-production on a film that was green lit on the day that her original was released to cinemas) and so Chris Weitz, fresh from the death knell of a far more interesting series of films (Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass), has been ushered into the fray.

For the uninitiated, Bella Swan (the charisma-less Kristin Stewart) is in love with Edward Cullen (a similarly limited Robert Pattinson) who just happens to be a vampire. The duo, having moped around for the first film in emo-bliss are about to be rent apart when Edward realises the danger he and his family pose to the non-converted Bella. Ms Swan mopes her way through the winter but suddenly realises that childhood friend Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) is actually really hot without his shirt on (an occasion that happens with alarming frequency judging by the wintry climes). Yet, would you believe it!, Jacob is actually a werewolf and sworn enemy on the bloodsuckers that Bella claims to still love. What's a girl to do?

Weitz brings a workman-like solidity to the uninteresting plot, which literally asks nothing more of our protagonists than to look moody and pout. When Bella pines for Edward and begins to let out guttural moans, you think we might be heading in a more interesting direction, but alas it only serves to usher in the fifty-ninth music montage set to edgy tween music. There are worryingly subtextual suggestions that chastity is the finest thing a teenager can do (even when all the characters involved are supposedly over 18 yet look 25) and when Michael Sheen turns up as a pale, pouting Italian Volturi and then reneges on the group's destruction because one of them replays a mental dream of running through the forest, you know it's time to abandon any hope for the forthcoming chapters.



Released on DVD and Blu-ray on 22nd March 2010 by E1 Entertainment.

Written by Simon Cole.