Director Catherine Hardwicke (“Thirteen”) offers up a fairly loyal adaptation of the much-beloved “Twilight” series’ first book, which chronicles the epic romance between a shy high school girl and her vampire beau. Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) moves from Phoenix to the small, rainy town of Forks, Wash., a gloomy setting that provides the “vampire vegetarian” Cullen family with the coverage they need to live undiscovered among humans. Hardwicke personalizes this project with a complex visual style that is unfortunately ridiculous in its excesses, and consequently difficult to watch. This style nevertheless contains its own logic; abrupt, disorienting cuts, rapid editing and few establishing shots force the viewer to constantly adapt to a different kind of seeing, perhaps meant to reflect the superior vision of vampires themselves. Blue filters additionally create the feeling of submersion in a kind of human aquarium, where schools of fish swim unknowingly with bloodthirsty sharks. These claustrophobic scenes stand in stark contrast to the sweeping crane shots highlighting the Pacific Northwest’s dewy greenery. Containing the most visually alive shots in the film, these scenes suggest an alternate vision for the film, a sublime realm to which only vampires and their human lovers seem to have access.

Much less interesting than Hardwicke’s visual style is the narrative itself, which, in the words of star-crossed lovers Bella and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), is a romance between a “stupid lamb” and a “masochistic lion:” predator and prey. Caught in a courtship constricted by notions of destiny and fate, Bella exists at times in an almost pre-vampire state, her pallid complexion visually uniting her with Edward and his vampire family. Yet if Bella were to become a vampire, what would become of the part of Edward’s attraction to her that is based on the scent of her blood? There must be something more to Bella than her extreme edibleness; however, the only clue to her uniqueness among humans is the fact that the telepathic Edward cannot read Bella’s mind. So, perhaps Bella might also be a kind of freak, and therefore ripe for transitioning from awkward teenager to a different kind of other-ness that’s superhuman and deadly.

Without this subtle foreshadowing, though, Bella’s initial passionate curiosity and ensuing obsession with Edward both simply appear insane. Overall, the plot relies too heavily on a romantic mythology that the viewer may or may not be able to relate to. The idea of soul mates (or in this case, soul-less mates) is unashamedly old-fashioned—much like the chivalrous Edward himself—and relies on a somewhat conservative version of reality that cannot be denied even when it is restated in more modern terms. As Edward says to Bella, “You’re like my own personal brand of heroin,” and indeed Edward and Bella are both presented as true love junkies, unswerving in their belief that their love is forever: truly forever in this case.

Being in each other’s presence inspires an overwhelming desire in each of them, yet this desire must remain unfulfilled so long as Edward stands in danger of eating Bella in the throes of physical passion. As in a drug overdose, the ultimate fix can also mean death for the human Bella. In the meantime, other vampires besides Edward pose a threat to Bella’s existence, an important subplot that arrives rather late in the narrative, when a pack of less civilized vampires stumbles across the Cullens, who are playing the vampire version of baseball during a thunderstorm. As the film’s visual climax, this scene is almost laughable in its indulgence in self-congratulatory special effects. They have a flashy and predictable quality that paves the way for the ensuing chase scenes, which, despite their slapdash quality, give some final momentum to the narrative.

If nothing else, the recent press surrounding Pattinson—coverage eclipsing that of Stewart—suggests that “Twilight” may have at least been very well-cast. Much of the book centers on Bella’s doubts as to why Edward would choose her as his love object, a “why me?” feeling that those who feel extraordinarily lucky in love can perhaps identify with. Stewart excels at portraying the guarded intensity of Bella, who, though reserved, knows when to voice her convictions and take action. Patterson, on the other hand, alternates capably between the devilish and angelic, a brooding dreamboat in both of these guises. This imbalance between them in terms of physical perfection (not only looks, but in strength) is a source of much of the dramatic tension in the narrative, but as Bella tells Edward in the book version, “I can’t always be Lois Lane.” In the film version, she offers her neck up to Edward on prom night, with fantasies of a Superman-like transition. As much as it would have been fucking awesome for Bella to be so changed on the supposed greatest night of her teen life, emerging from the romantic gazebo covered in twinkle lights hungry for the blood of her classmates, Edward refrains this time—and such is the stuff that sequels are made of.