Twilight is a swooning, atmospheric gothic teen romance, writes Michael Dwyer

NOT BEING an aficionado of anything labelled teen chicklit, I wasn't among the millions who bought any of the four vampire novels to date from Stephenie Meyer. The prospect of the movie version seemed just as unprepossessing - but for the fact that Twilight is directed by Catherine Hardwicke, who exhibited such flair, empathy and true grit in her uncompromising picture of a troubled teen in Thirteen(2003).

Defying preconceptions, Twilightproves consistently absorbing and entertaining in its thoroughly refreshing take on the vampire movie genre. The setting is winter in the Pacific Northwest town of Forks, the wettest area in the US, and the movie is shot in a washed-out palette that's almost as drained of colour as the faces of the local Cullen family, the palest screen clan since the Addamses.

Kristen Stewart plays Bella Swan, the new girl in town. She moves to Forks from Phoenix to live with her police officer father (Billy Burke) when her mother remarries. Bella is quiet, sensitive and with such pallid features of her own that they prompt several jokey observations about people from Phoenix being "really tanned".

The Cullen family, who have moved from Alaska to Forks, includes five foster children in their late teens, and Bella is seated next to the youngest of them in class. He is Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) who's not really all that young. He's 17, although it transpires that he's been that age since 1918.

At first Edward seems uncomfortable in Bella's company, glowering and staring at her, but they are drawn closer together after he saves her from an out- of-control van. Asked how he did that, he drily explains, "I had an adrenaline rush. It's quite common. You can Google it."

We suspect that this could be love - or bloodlust - at first sight. The school prom looms, and with it the anticipation that it could be the bloodiest such event in a movie since Carrie. Meanwhile, Bella's dad is investigating some mysterious deaths in which the victims (one of whom wears a "Kiss me, I'm Irish" T-shirt) apparently were killed by marauding animals.

As the scenario for Twilightis revealed, it seems highly unlikely to develop into a full-blooded love story, so to speak, but it overcomes any doubts as it gradually turns swooningly romantic, and Bella and Edward fall madly for each other.

The script is sprinkled with wry humour, as when Edward is introducing Bella to his family and says, "This is my mother, to all intents and purposes", or when a rival vampire spies Bella and says to Edward, "I see you've brought a snack." And when the Cullen family play baseball in a thunderstorm, it turns into a game that's closer to Quidditch.

Yet for all its playful, knowing references, Twilightis a serious, even deadly serious, movie, and steeped in a rich, ominous atmosphere that's heightened by a gorgeous, ethereal score from Carter Burwell, the regular composer for the Coen brothers.

Hardwicke invests the movie with a keen visual style, making sparing but quite thrilling use of special effects that recall Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. She grounds the central love story - played out in beautifully judged performances by Stewart and Pattinson - in palpable desire and affecting intimacy that is necessarily chaste but wholly seductive.

Directed by Catherine Hardwicke. Starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Cam Gigandet, Billy Burke, Ashley Greene, Nicki Reed, Ashton Rathbone, Peter Facinelli 12A cert, gen release, 122 min