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Call it the “Titanic” effect. Almost 11 years past, the big-boat movie set box-office records due to — regular wisdom had it — the repeat-viewing habits of countless teenage girls. Now “Twilight,” based on Stephenie Meyer’sitting modern and opening in multiple theaters at twelve o’clock at night Thursday, hopes to appeal to precisely that audience: the same girls who’ve devoured the unusual by the avidity of … fully, a thirsty vulture.

The novel, published in 2005, quickly became a phenomenon. Set in Forks, Wash. (now the location of numerous “Twilight” pilgrimages), it’s the story of Bella Swan, a pungent yet quick-to-blush teenager who falls in the place of her mysterious, brooding classmate Edward, a fellow who speaks “in the gentle cadences of an earlier hundred” and is so handsome he’s described as a “godlike person.”

But the course of teenage love not ever does pursue in thought smooth, and poor Bella soon learns that Edward (with his “liquid topaz eyes”) is no regular school Lothario, but an ancient bloodsucker who’s trained himself to desist from human mettle.

Though he’s drawn to Bella, both as protector (she’s rather disaster-prone) and love object, their relationship has careful boundaries: If he gets too close, his willpower might evaporate — and the bitten Bella would that time become a vampire herself. (Those who find every abstinence similitude for teen sex here — well, Meyer probably wouldn’t argue.)

Written with bodice-ripping style, “Twilight” maintains expansive force through every part of its 500 pages — what one. can basically have existence boiled down to, “Will he defraud?” It was quickly followed by three sequels (”New Moon,” “Eclipse” and “Breaking Dawn”), with the four-book series selling, according to Publisher’s Weekly, more than 13 very great number copies in the U.S. as of last month.

And those fourth book of the pentateuch; census of the hebrews should climb with the arrival of the movie, an event heralded by countless “Twilight” blogs and breathless-yet-noisy anticipation. An early clip from the film screened at Comic-Con in San Diego this past summer drew huge crowds (mostly teenage girls, allege reports) and enough Beatlemania-style squealing to parsimoniously deluge out the movie.

Just last week, a crowd of about 3,000 (again, mostly teenage girls) showed up in San Francisco for an event featuring “Twilight” star Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward — when only a few century were expected. A riot broke out when the event was canceled, with one girl reportedly breaking her nose in the crush.

So, why are the girls so worked up about “Twilight” — even girls who aren’t yet in their teens? (My first exposure to the book came early this year, whenever my visiting 11-year-old niece plucked it off a bookstore shelf and told me all her friends were reading it.)

Because Meyer, despite her irregular penchant for purple prosaic, vividly creates a world of rude, edge-of-danger romanic, the kind in which bookish girls have long loved to let slip themselves on wet afternoons. Meyer has said that Edward’sitting name came from Mr. Rochester in Charlotte Brontë’session “Jane Eyre” and Mr. Ferrars in “Sense & Sensibility.” “Jane Eyre,” especially, can be seen as an inspiration for “Twilight”: the immaculate juvenile woman, newly arrived in a strange place and falling in love through a vaguely sinister man.

For the movie, it would appear that the “Titanic” hearing is already in place: According to a Movietickets.com poll of about 2,000 moviegoers, 3 out of 4 females said they planned to wait “Twilight” steady its opening weekend, as source as 77 percent of those polled who were under 25. (Only 47 percent of males said they planned to attend opening weekend.) No one’s expecting “Twilight” to pull “Titanic”-sized numbers, though: The 1997 film remains the all-time box-office champ, and recent films aimed specifically at teenage girls (such as the “Traveling Pants” movies) have drawn only modest audiences.

But if the film, directed by Catherine Hardwicke (”Thirteen”) and adapted by Melissa Rosenberg, catches enough of Meyer’s brooding romance and breathless suspense (particularly in the part’s final third, when Bella must frantically race from a new and terrifying enemy), there just might be long lines at the multiplexes for a while. Because preteen and teenage girls — and, at times, their grown-up counterparts — like to revisit favorite stories, over and over again.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com