After the star-crossed romance of Twilight and the depression that dominated New Moon, will Eclipse finally bring The Twilight Saga into bona fide horror movie territory?
So claims star Robert Pattinson, who told MTV over the weekend that this June’s The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is different from the first two films in the vampire romance franchise. “It’s like a horror film,” said Pattinson, with a hint of surprise. And as FEARnet’s resident Twilight expert, I’m inclined to agree. With more blood, more action, and more sinister threats closing in on Bella Swan’s world, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse could very well be the series installment that earns the teen-friendly franchise its first official horror movie badge of honor.
Sure, Twilight had its villainous vampire showdown, seeding Bella and Edward’s “getting to know you” love story with a handful of mysterious “animal attacks” in Forks that culminated in James hunting and attacking Bella. A bit less horror-ific was last year’s sequel, New Moon, which spent most of its time on Bella’s post-break up moping — until she, Edward, and Alice found themselves in peril in the subterranean lair of the Volturi for the film’s last-act face-off.
But Eclipse is where The Twilight Saga takes a turn for the scary. Yes, yes, the romance and the love triangle are still there to get Team Edward and Team Jacob fans in a tizzy. (Two words: tent scene!) Balancing out Eclipse’s heightened romantic stakes, however, is a generous helping of dread in the form of a reckless and dangerous army of newborn vampires created by the vengeful vampire, Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard). Led by Victoria’s henchman Riley (The Loved Ones‘ Xavier Samuel), these newborns are credited with mysterious serial killings that plague Seattle — and they have only one ultimate objective: kill Bella Swan.
Eclipse director David Slade earned his horror stripes with the cat-and-mouse thriller Hard Candy and the gory vampire flick 30 Days of Night, but here he’ll have to keep the scares contained under a PG-13 rating. Judging from clips and trailers, however, Slade’s injected his Twilight pic with atmosphere and unsettling imagery that should up the ante; what’s more, the film appears to include more of Riley and the newborns than the novel did, including spooky shots of the newborns that appear to come from Stephenie Meyer’s new Twilight novella, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner.
Many cite Eclipse as the darkest of the Twilight books, and with good reason. The vampire killings in Seattle set the tone from the start, creating a sense of fear and suggesting the frightening potential of a pack of evil vampires let loose in a world where most vampires, even the ones that eat humans, stay mostly under the radar. Tension mounts between the two supernatural families in Bella’s life — the Cullen clan and Jacob’s Wolf Pack — before the mortal enemies join forces for a massive battle in Bella’s defense. An unknown vampire intruder breaks into Bella’s bedroom, putting her safety even more into question. The threat of Victoria looms, and Bella fears that everyone she loves will be killed. And throughout it all, Bella begs to die and become a vampire herself, despite the pain and suffering she knows is a necessary part of the transformation.
And then there are the flashbacks. We learn why Rosalie’s so bitter: she was gang raped and beaten and left for dead, and took bloody revenge on her attackers after being turned into a vampire. Jasper’s back story is even more violent. A Confederate soldier, he joined an army of war-mongering Southern vampires and endured decades of vampire bites and injury in battle.
By the next sequel, Breaking Dawn, Bella will be resigned to her fate and we’ll get another twist on the genre as Twilight dives headfirst into body horror. But Eclipse is where all hell breaks loose — with the Volturi, Victoria’s blood-crazed newborns, and Bella’s complicated love life all threatening to bring her world to the brink of collapse. Here’s hoping it’s as scary on film as it was on paper.
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