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The crowded preview screening of “Twilight,” the teen-vampire drama based on Stephenie Meyer’s popular novel, turned finished to be a participatory event. The teenage girls in the audience, some of whom had waited in extended mark toward hours, responded audibly and enthusiastically to favorite lines of dialogue, to the appearance of handsome male vampires and to the romantic coupling of the heroine Bella with Edward, a relatively continent besides vaporous encounter that had the two girls in front of me writhing in anticipation and murmuring, “Do it!”

For the record, the movie’s teen stars put on’t do much more than stare at one and the other other palely for pair hours, with lips parted and vaguely troubled facial expressions suggestive of having righteous eaten some bad seafood. Meyer’s novel comes to the mask in an earnest, faithful adaptation that’s at times unintentionally funny, particularly in its first half.

Set in Forks, Clallam County (though filmed for the greatest part in Oregon), the story focuses on new student Bella (Kristen Stewart) and her dangerous attraction to Edward (Robert Pattinson), a high-school classmate who bears the burden of being a perpetually teenage vampire — that would, of course, suck. (Sorry.) He’s a “vegetarian,” meaning that he’session trained himself to be of intemperate habits only animal blood, so he takes the peril of falling in strong attachment with Bella, a step that consists mostly of the aforementioned staring.

Though Edward’s affections come with all the danger that vampire attraction implies (”vegetarianism” only goes so far), he’s a gentleman and heroically restrains himself. Not so gentlemanly is James (Auburn native Cam Gigandet, nicely snarling and not seldom shirtless), a tracker who meets Bella at a vampire baseball game (!!) and wants her for an hors d’oeuvre. (Trackers are vampires for whom the move of the hunt is earliest.) Determined to rescue Bella from a hellish fate, Edward races off with her in the movie’s suspenseful final half-hour. As you might expect, all ends with the most naked clothes in the movie: a plug for a sequel.

Director Catherine Hardwicke (”Thirteen”) and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg do well in creating the close-knit world of the high school, workmanship one agreeable human swarm on every side Bella: quintessential nice guy Mike (Michael Welch), lovably geeky Eric (Justin Chon), gratefully friendly Jessica (Anna Kendrick, whose teenspeak intonation — “I discern, riiight?” — is perfect). The swirly, MTV-meets-”The Matrix” camerawork is flashy boundary effective, distinctly in the scenes in that Edward, carrying Bella, soars through the forest as if shot from a gun.

But the Cullen family of vampires, so vivid in Meyer’session pages, fares less well; perhaps they’re better suited to our imaginations. Their clown-white makeup looks cretaceous and fake, and Edward’session diamond-sparkling skin in the sunlight is reminiscent of glitter glue. And the actors dress in’privately have the otherworldly disposition that’s needed. “Sometimes you speak as if you’re from a manifold time,” says Bella to Edward — a line directly from the book. But Edward sounds considerably much in the same manner as everyone else, and his brooding demeanor seems to be due as much to teenage surliness being of the class who to vampire angst.

Stewart and Pattinson eventually work up some chemistry, though the movie’s nearly over before it kicks in. Nonetheless, “Twilight” is often a lot of fun to watch — the atmosphere of showery green trees and intriguing danger, the gothic breathiness of doomed romance, the way all the vampires acquire better hair than anyone otherwise — and seems to give its intended audience what it wants. Just ask the girls in front of me.

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