If nothing else, "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" proves that the vampire truly will never die; undead indeed, the bloodsuckers of the franchise demonstrate the apparently infinite possibilities in their ancient legends. Vampirologists and Dracularians may lament the movie's blithe disregard of such time-honored apparatus as garlic, crucifixes, the stake through the heart, but apparently these troubled times demand different material and their unschooled audiences care nothing for tradition.

Following its predecessors, the new film concentrates on the romance between Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), a vapid pair of young lovers with all the spice and sparkle of a bowl of oatmeal. Once again Bella spends much of the movie begging Edward to make her a vampire (translation: relieve her of her virginity), and once again, the noble Edward demurs, preferring, in his quaint old-fashioned way, to marry the poor girl. Interspersed among all their tedious amorous dialectic, the familiar threat arises from evil vampires bent on the destruction of the whole Cullen family.

Like the last picture, this one also uses another clan, the Native American gang of werewolves that includes another young lad in love with Bella, Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner); though sworn enemies of the vampires, the werewolves join the outnumbered Cullens in a battle against their enemies, a group of evil vampires led by a crazed female named Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard), hellbent on revenge against Bella and Edward. That battle serves as the grand climax of the film, with the defeat of the bad guys apparently clearing the way for the impending nuptials of the couple, followed presumably by the grand consummation of their troubled love.

Although vampires generally furnish a richer subject for analysis than werewolves, in "Eclipse" the Native shape shifters display a far more attractive appearance and personality than the wan Cullens, whose patriarch, with his pale, pointed face and red eyes, resembles nothing so much as a large white rat. In their original human form Jacob and his pals behave like a bunch of normal, good-natured young guys having fun together and apparently working out a lot - Jacob, who as Edward snidely observes, doesn't seem to own a shirt, constantly shows off his washboard abs, a nice contrast to the etiolated Eddie. In their lupine form, Jacob's pack metamorphoses into huge, quite beautiful beasts, again more attractive, more lively, more virile than the vampires.

One of the continuing mysteries that "Eclipse" shares with its two predecessors remains the character of Bella herself; the narrative never makes any sense of this vacuous teenager, nor explains why she should become the love object fought over by both a vampire and a werewolf (lucky girl). Her choice of the epicene drip Edward seems more or less appropriate, however, since he matches her in saccharine blandness, and thus guarantees them an insipid eternity together.

The picture occupies some weird, possibly hitherto undiscovered niche in the complicated structure of horror cinema. Its huge success among adolescent girls underlines in a somewhat unusual way the inherently sexual nature of the vampire, but Bella's constant nagging for an initiation into the group differentiates her from other females in the films - they never seek their fate, but find themselves unwilling victims of a creature who transforms them with his awful kiss.

The final battle between the bad vampires and the Cullens and their werewolf allies extends and intensifies the previous vampire violence, complete with dismemberments and decapitations. The Volturi, that dreary crew of vampire aristocrats, even turn up to make trouble for both sides. The whole ridiculous business concludes with something like a truce between the ancient enemies, the bloodsuckers and the canines, both touching and inspiring, I am sure.

"Eclipse" proceeds in fits and starts, alternating Bella's intermittent narration, her conversations with members of the Cullen family in which they reveal their own sad histories of transformation, occasional sequences of bad vampires behaving badly, and endless soppy and entirely unconvincing love scenes between Bella and Edward, many of them in fields of flowers. Talky and dull, the movie frequently repeats actions, characters, and dialogue from the first two works in the series, and of course steadfastly maintains the same tone of maudlin adolescent longing.