CINEMAS go to the expense of midnight screenings to tempt a franchise’s dyed-in-the-wool fanatics to see the film’s first local screening.

I have it on impeccable authority that many fanatics voted with their feet and went home early from one local cinema that screened this vampire/werewolf fantasy at midnight on its opening day.

Bella and Edward are getting married. He’s a century-old vampire looking like 20. Edward’s werewolf rival opposes the marriage. Fourteen days after the wedding night, Bella sees no reason to unwrap a fresh Tampax. She is carrying an incubus. Or a succubus. Whichever it is is immaterial because she damn near dies during a brief gestation. But she can’t die yet because the coven master has welcomed a new member and the film’s makers promise Part 2.

In a longer career reviewing films than anybody else in Canberra, I have managed so far to avoid the “Twilight” saga. This one gets a single star for exteriors looking attractive even when patently contrived hokum and for CG effects. The acting is wooden. The plot is trivial. The fantasy is weary. The title is internally inconsistent. The fatuity bored me.

At all cinemas