Viewing “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” the latest offering of Stephenie Meyer’s vampires-and-the-girl-who-loves-them series, is a dissonant experience.

On one hand, Kristen Stewart is coming into her own as a film star. While never a particularly kinetic actress, she’s found a screen presence that telegraphs sexual energy to the camera. It gives her character the kind of gravitational pull that draws a story around her. She’s more of a woman now and less of the angst-ridden teen that charmed the original Twilight film. It’s a tradeoff that has its costs, but a franchise must evolve if it wants to sustain itself and Stewart is up to the task.

On the other hand, the franchise is sinking into a morass of mediocrity around her. If “The Twilight Saga” has any aspiration other than to showcase Stewart’s talents, it is to become the longest Harlequin novel ever committed to film. Author Stephenie Meyer has found her romantic triangle in a vampire, a werewolf and a small-town girl and it seems to be all that she can think about. Every new character, every plot twist, is introduced for the sole purpose of stirring up romantic drama between Bella, Edward and Jacob. This “Real Housewives of Forks” writing style has taken on an undead quality of its own. It’s hard not to harbor the perverse wish that one of them would just bite the other so they can get on with their lives.

“Eclipse” opens with Bella and Edward enjoying a quiet romantic moment together, but don’t be fooled. In the codified telling of the Twilight series, it’s akin to watching a bunny rabbit munch on daisies at the beginning of a nature documentary: a warning that bad things are on the horizon.

Sure enough, people are dropping dead by the dozen in Seattle. Edward and his vampire clan suspect that Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard), the vampire whose boyfriend was killed by Edward in the first film, is behind all this. If they are right, she is raising an army of vampires too powerful for the Cullens to fight off on their own. They will need to enlist the help of Jacob and his Quileute werewolves. That, of course, requires Edward and Jacob to put aside their competition for Bella long enough to save her life.

Easier said than done. Bella spends an exhausting amount of energy keeping the testosterone corked in her boys. Edward and Jacob spend so much time glowering at each other that the battle of the vampires seems like a distraction. But, I suspect that for true Twilight fans, this won’t be seen as a negative.

For those who aren’t “Twihards,” the film may feel like a thousand paper cuts of missed opportunities. The first “Twilight” introduced us to an entertaining cast of supporting characters. Collectively, they fleshed out the town of Forks and, along with the damp, grey cloud cover, made it a vibrant character in the story.

In this outing, they’ve mainly been shoved to the side. Worse, Rachelle Lefevre, who gave a deliciously sexy turn as Victoria, is missing altogether. She’s been replaced by Bryce Dallas Howard who manages to reduce Victoria to a cartoon. The Twilight franchise may not leave us with many memorable moments, but Lefevre desending the stairway at the end of the first “Twilight” film is one of the better setups for a sequel in recent memory.

The Twilight books represent an enormous amount of breathless fiction that, taken together, has produced one very charming, small movie. And, now that the blood has been sucked out of the franchise, it refuses to die. It may be time to break out the garlic.

Directed by David Slade
Rated PG-13
** (Two Stars)