Teen vampire romance from the popular series of girls' books by Stephenie Meyer, a sort of Nancy Drew — Vampire Lover. It merits a modicum of credit for attempting to bring some virgin blood to a tired old genre: the nonnuclear vampire family, having settled in the rural Northwest for maximum privacy and cloud cover, strive to fit in and stay straight, fancying themselves "vegetarian" for dining only on animal blood instead of human. Because the narrative point of view is that of an ordinary flesh-and-blood high-school girl, we don't witness the gory details of their daily diet. (Exsanguination of deer and rabbit, to say nothing of pet dog and cat, could tend to alienate the audience.) What we mainly witness is the cultivated aura of mystery and danger around the eternal seventeen-year-old adopted son of the family. And the business of being a bloodsucker in the 21st Century takes a distant backseat to the business of campus courtship: the classic pattern of Good Girl meets Bad Boy. He flatteringly lusts after her ("You're like my own personal brand of heroin"), but even more flatteringly he respects her ("I can't ever lose control with you"): a parent's least nightmare, and little wonder that the hearts of schoolgirlish readers, and now moviegoers, might go pitty-pat. Given the general level of innocuousness and salubriousness, we don't expect the frustrated teen sweethearts now or in future installments to explore the engorgement option in Theodore Sturgeon's novella Some of Your Blood, namely menses. (Eeuuww!) But given the fixation on the girl's "scent" and given the old-fashioned proscription against Going Too Far or indeed Going All the Way, that option insistently comes to mind. Kristen Stewart, a cashew head on a pipe-cleaner body, to all appearances unsullied by vanity, does very well with things like adolescent insecurity, crippling self-consciousness, unvoiced feelings, and the scariness of sex; and on those counts Catherine Hardwicke is a sympathetic director. She is less sympathetic in shooting everyone in the cast, human and vampire alike, with a deathly bluish pallor. Robert Pattinson as the bloodthirsting heartthrob, meanwhile, achieves little more than Cornball Cool and requires a lot of slow-motion and a lot of hair gel to help him with it. (2008) — Duncan Shepherd