“It will be as though I never existed”, brooding, self-sacrificing vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) informs his beloved Bella Swan, before beating a hasty retreat from their current residence in Forks in a vain attempt to protect her from his kind.

As Bella (Kristen Stewart) mourns that impeccable, pale bonestructure, life passes her by in a mopey, sullen haze, until newly-ripped childhood friend Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) lends her a bulging shoulder to cry on. Their ever-increasing closeness is sweet to watch, but complications arise in that it just so happens that he’s also a werewolf and besotted with her, thus creating the love triangle that forms the very crux of The Twilight Saga: New Moon, the adaptation of the second book in Stephenie Meyer’s supernatural four-part series. This Swan girl sure knows how to pick ’em.

Convinced that Bella is dead after hearing tales of her daredevil stunts (carried out in order to evoke illusions of his face) and unable to carry on without her, Edward goes to Vampire royalty the Volturi in Italy in order to also die, placing Bella in a race against time to save him. Volturi leader Aro (Michael Sheen) is given a deliciously Jack Sparrow-esque campness, whilst Dakota Fanning is wonderfully eerie as the small but lethal Jane. It is a pity that these two have too little screen time.

Whilst Catherine Hardwicke’s Twilight had a more muted, indie feel, director Chris Weitz’s endeavour bears more of the stamps of a Hollywood franchise – it’s had more money thrown at it this time around, evident in its slicker, more polished appearance (it’s in colour!); there’s bare torsos by the bucketload, and Melissa Rosenberg’s writing is generally sharper - although there are still some genuinely cringe worthy lines, occasionally clunky acting, and a flash-forward ‘dream’ sequence cheesier than a French creamery.

The CGI wolves leave a lot to be desired on occasions, too, although given that Weitz had around ten months to pull it all together, New Moon is a commendable effort - if not a little overly drawn out - which as a whole remains faithful to the story that continues to get the pulses of hormonal females across the globe racing, although unlikely to create any new converts. Still, when it holds the record for the third-biggest opening weekend in film history, this is probably a somewhat minor issue.