Unless movie fans have been living in a cave for the past 2 years, they already know more than enough about blushing, flustered knee knocker Bella Swan and her desperately loved chunk of sparkling vampiric marble, Edward Cullen. When Stephenie Meyer first graced the world with her dream inspired vampire romance novel now known as the Twilight Saga, she may not have seen the cataclysmic tidal wave of fan love it would generate. The books were easy reads that tapped directly into the angsty emotional territory of romance itself, offering vampires more along the lines of what Anne Rice gives us than anything Bram Stoker or John Carpenter ever envisioned. The first movie managed to become something of a Star Wars phenomenon for the emo crowd and it’s only picking up steam judging by this movie’s popularity and the planet sized load of merchandise hitting the shelves in time for Christmas.

New Moon brings back most of the characters so loved from the first movie and adds an additional character, Jacob Black, the Native American werewolf who will serve as the ever brooding Edward’s rival for Bella’s heart. Since the dearly departed Edward is not around to save Bella from her own emotionally suicidal tendencies, she runs into the arms of friend turned lover, Jacob. This sucks her right into the world of werewolves who are, predictably, the ancient enemies of vampires. To the film’s credit, it tries with the story to keep to the book’s premise and still give us plenty of visuals and lots of different back story that the readers of the books love so much. The story is what was seen in Twilight, but with a bit of a twist since Bella stumbles into loving two boys at the same time.

It is no exaggeration to say that New Moon has taken a big time bite out of box office history, boasting the biggest midnight screening and opening day in the history of film, grossing more than $73 million. Now whether that is going to translate into a resurge in horror movies remains to be seen, but it will definitely turn up the heat on the already roaring urban fantasy genre of novels and movies. This is a definite cousin to horror and the fact that Twilight is promoting vampires is something of a positive thing for horror fans. New Moon goes to some lengths to give us special effects with werewolves, too, but it’s nothing that’s utterly unique. Which really is too bad because even if this isn’t made to be the scariest film on earth, they could do more than have lock jawed actors mumble at each other. There could be blood and plenty of it, during the scarier scenes. In all honestly, for $50 million the creators could have given us a little real fear that Bella’s supposed to feel. They could have given us a little real emotion, too. Don’t expect that with New Moon.

The bottom line is that horror comes in all stripes and one of those particular ribbons happens to be of a more gothly romantic variety. That’s no crime, but it is certainly not going to whet the appetites of those who like their horror dark and heavy. New Moon is aimed at becoming the next step for all those Harry Potter fans who’ve grown up.

The sad thing is, it doesn’t evolve the emotional content much and it definitely fails to give the sense of menace that books showed both the werewolves and vampires as clearly having. Even if it wasn’t meant to be a fright fest, New Moon could have borrowed from our genre in a legitimate way.

Don’t you think, horror fans?