No Room In Hell

Last month’s Fangoria’s cover sported the Twilight Saga’s dreadlocked pseudo-villain, Laurent. His menacing expression and a headline “A Darker Twilight” were accompanied by an article quoting screen writer Melissa Rosenberg telling fans to expect “something for everyone this time around.” New Moon (2009) is the second film adaptation in Stephanie Meyers’s four part series of novels about a young girl’s love for an eternally teenage heart throb, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson).

Twilight (2008) introduced the saga to the big screen with a typical human/non-human romance plot that builds in clichéd fashion until it brings a trio of villains on screen.  The movie asserts one of these antagonist vampires is the toughest bad-ass to grace the silver screen since Darth Vader and then he goes out like bitch in under two seconds with dismemberment scene that occurs off screen. WTF?

New Moon shows the result of a similar vampire death on screen with-in its first twenty minutes at the hands of the Volturi, the darkest, oldest and most powerful; the royalty of vampires in  Meyer’s universe. Unfortunately, this is merely a carrot to be dangled for the better part of two hours in which you will wait to see them again.

The purpose of New Moon is to essentially build the back story of Bella’s (Kristen Stewart) best friend Jacob (Taylor Lautner) and his abilities as a Lycan, “Werewolf,” Kate Beckensale would specify. If the Underworld saga has not gotten you sick of high flying werewolf antics then New Moon’s dog boys do create some appealing visual effects and generally make themselves more likable and interesting than the bloodsuckers. This conflict essentially fuels the narrative as Bella, Jacob, and Edward find themselves in a growing love triangle while Victoria (Rachelle Lefevre)—the mate of the “ultimate” vampire that got owned in Twilight—appears once or twice; and may as well wave at audiences with a T-shirt that says, “Don’t forgot about my subplot, it’ll matter next movie.”  Eventually, all this clutter triggers a series of events that has Bella running through the streets of Italy trying to prevent another clichéd tragedy re-write of when Bill Shakespeare “laid his scene” there in Verona.

Once that silliness is over, we finally get back to the Volturi who are creepy, amusing, and interesting but by no means groundbreakingly original. Most compelling is seeing a maturing Dakota Fanning portray one of these darkest of blood suckers with an ability to crush even her own kind with a thought and squint of her crimson eyes. However, this scene only actually provides a Matrix-style fight sequence and the revelation of another plot point that might matter later (see Victoria’s T-Shirt). The only chilling image involves groups of families being lead on tour of the building, basically lambs; the doors slam behind them and the screaming begins, but the audience only the hears their terrified screams. Remember folks, the PG-13 rating is the tug on this cash cow’s utters.

To answer Fangoria’s question, “Is it darker?” yes, it is darker, but lavender is also darker than pink, and that does not make this film easily accessible for wider audiences or horror fans. If anything, this film is more complex, harder to soak up than its predecessor, and more of just a visual representation for book readers. After the film, I had to ask to my girlfriend—who has read all four novels—dozens of questions to just get up to speed on what the characters’ motivations actually were.

New Moon is entertaining, visually stimulating, and a lot of fun, but don’t allow any magazine to convince you that’s it blacker than blacker the blackest black and brutal, to paraphrase Nathan Explosion, because it’s just not. At the end of the day, it’s there so Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner can walk around with their shirts off and a crowded theater of teenage girls can scream like it’s 1965 again and the Beatles have just taken the stage at Shea.