After the untimely death of her mother in a Montauck surfing accident, Beckett, 16, and her father, novelist Miles Warner, move to the city to begin a new life. Enrolled at the exclusive Hamilton preparatory school in Riverdale, Becekett finds first love and discovers that the school is run by a coven of beautiful and seductive women who perpetuate their fountain of youth by drinking the blood of virgins.

I'm not the best person to review this movie since I only saw it by sheer accident, and it's a long way from the type of movies I usually watch. Strangely though, no one else has reviewed this yet. . . I'm sure this movie will inevitably be compared to "Twilight", but that's not really fair. It isn't great, but it IS a lot better than "Twilight". It is about a teenage girl, "Beckett", who enrolls in a new private school and encounters supernatural creatures, but the creatures can't necessarily be described as vampires; they're more like witches. But even if they are vampires, they're more of the female kind inspired by Elizabeth Barthory (the real-life Hungarian countess who tried to maintain her youth by bathing in virgin blood).

In many ways though this film is the OPPOSITE of "Twilight". That movie is basically about a teenage girl deciding whether or not to give it up to her abstinent vampire boyfriend, and after three books and four movies worth of drawn-out teen angst, perhaps she finally does (I actually only made it an hour into the first movie). The girl in this movie does have a pretty-boy male love interest, but he's human rather than vampiric, and she is faced with a cabal of villainous creatures who want to feast on her sweet virgin blood. So, without spoiling it, I will say that she makes a completely rational adult decision (and it may not be just the vampires who get "staked").

Teenage movies often used to be called "coming-of-age" movies because they were about adolescents facing real-life problems and ultimately becoming adults (which usually involves a loss of virginity). Starting with the John Hughes movies of the 80's though, the teen movie would become this kind of alternative fairy-tale realm, which was often really more like a flight back into childhood and never-never land. Realistically though, MOST people grow up/lose their virginity just because you eventually HAVE TO, not because they meet Prince Charming (or Princess Charming), fall in love, and live happily ever after. "Twilight" is more of a fairy-tale movie; this movie, despite the vampire/witches, is ultimately a more coming-of-age movie.

Not that it's necessarily a very good movie. The lead in this (Sophia Curtis) I suspect is a teen model because she's even more pretty--and wooden in her acting--then Kristin Stewart. The boyfriend (Graham Phillips)is similarly both pretty and kind of vacant. The strongest actor by far is Kelly Reilly, who plays the villainess. Reilly is a British actress who was in the French "L'Auberge Espagnole" movies and Nicholas Roeg's interesting horror film "Puffball" (which probably no "Twilight" fan has ever heard of). She is also ridiculously attractive (I kept imagining--or hoping--she and Curtis would just start making out whenever they were on screen together), but she is the only one in the cast that has strong acting chops. This is not a particularly good movie, but it doesn't really deserve to just be indiscriminately lumped together with "Twilight".