That rumble in the distance, dear reader, is the sound of hordes of Mrs. Edward Cullens’ on the march, armed with laptops and pitchforks. From my improvised bunker, I’m about to make an unthinkable admission.

Here it is: I have yet to read Twilight.

In a moment of weakness, desperate to fend off the marauders, I’ve cracked open the DVD case and write this while cowering in a corner to await my doom.

Catherine Hardwicke’s heavily stylised take on Stephanie Meyer’s novel concerns new girl in town Bella Swan, and her passion for Robert Pattinson’s Edward. Pattinson is arrestingly beautiful and mysterious, in that anaemic way that appeals to pubescent girls and their mothers. Alas, Edward’s mystery consists of an irritating mumbling, looking up at Bella and at the lens through his lashes, and very little else. Where are Christopher Lee and Gary Oldman when I need them? I’d even take Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in frilly shirts. None of them available? No?

Curses! Back to Edward and Bella, then – she’s a blank, pallid humourless cipher. Hers is a classic set-up: she’s also a fish out of water when she moves from the heat of Phoenix, her free spirited mother to the town of Forks and her silent, long-suffering father, the local chief of police. Charlie Swan (Billy Burke), who I half expected to turn into a character from Fargo, is one of the best aspects of the film. His laconic, unsentimental persona also allows him to be conveniently distant or absent while his daughter goes gallivanting through the woods. The stuff of fantasy? You betcha.

Played as a gawky tomboy by Kristen Stewart, it’s never quite clear why the girl exerts such a pull over Edward, or indeed the boys at her new school, all of them ordinary, decent, if a little immature. In short, Bella represents the secret belief that lives in the hearts of all solitary, bookish girls. That we’re above the gaudy flutter about prom dresses and dates with silly boys with big cars; we can perceive the inner beauty of an unhappy monster like Edward, as he perceives ours. All without actually having  to form a relationship.

Twilight captures the natural self absorption of a shy introvert like Bella at seventeen in Edward’s one wry line: I tell you I can read minds and you think there’s something wrong with you?

Except there’s one small problem. Edward’s beauty is entirely external and conventional. No beauty-and-the-beast insight needed, and therefore a rather limp conflict. The other boys at school can’t hope to compete with Ed’s rich, bohemian family of veggie vampires, old world manners, his magnificent cheekbones and artfully tousled hair. He’s a risk, too, in a way the other boys aren’t, but somehow, the threat is never believable, even when Edward Cullen frequently refers to himself as a killer, constantly battling his baser urges. A fault of both the underwritten character and flat performances, which neuter any frisson of the erotic danger on which any good vampire, and indeed coming of age, tale relies.

Twilight also suffers for its problematic leaps of logic. Bella goes from knowing nothing about Edward, to finding his odd, creepy stalking romantic, to falling desperately in love. By contrast, their first kiss is an exquisitely pained, over-edited damp squib that takes place well over half way into the film. We never really see her wrestle with Edward’s immortality and extraordinary abilities, or indeed any real connection between them, since anything approaching a full sentence is a struggle for both.

Twilight makes the most of its misty, moody vistas, in glorious great, wide tracking shots on location. The chaste courtship is drenched with dreamy imagery and coy symbolism as the lovers lie side-by-side in a fairytale forest. The recurring deer running through the trees motif recycles that delicious Mills and Boon trope about the swooning heroine bolting like a startled fawn at the merest hint of sexual congress, while yearning to submit.

But, despite the Cullen mania sweeping the world and the interwebs, the nearest I got to an attack of the vapours was during Edward’s halting small talk about Forks’ unrelenting weather. Oh, the constant drizzle, the swirling fog, the ice! The Cullens’ thunderstorm baseball game makes a thrilling set piece, almost worth the dismemberment that awaits me. (I’m British. I don’t play baseball. I can’t help myself.)

An anti-climax in every sense – like many a gothic romance, Twilight is all about the risks and rewards of allowing intimacy. Romance? If you like, but that other stuff’ll kill you: a concept both troubling and refreshing in a teen movie, if for no other reason than the distinct lack of flesh on camera. That really should make plenty of room for exploring the fears and contradictions that still cloud any discussion of teen sexuality, for character and plot, but no such luck. Instead, Twilight frantically sublimates those murky longings into a fetish for violent death.

Quick! The fans are at my door. Maybe I can distract them with something glittery?

If you can overlook the blatant, constant product placement – lookie here, kids! A shiny Volvo!  An Apple computer! – Twilight updates a long tradition in vampire lore and old-fashioned romance with style if not substance.