"Vampires Suck" Blu-Ray, DVD Movie Review

"Vampires Suck" 

Blu-Ray, DVD Movie Review

Directed and Written by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, Rated R, 82-minutes.

By our guest blogger, Matthew Schimkowitz

To put it bluntly, "Vampires Suck" sucks. It's a lazy, unfunny mess of a movie, which, in its attempts to parody "The Twilight Saga," insults fans of the series more so than the films. The movie misses this easy target by a mile, and leaves its audience as soulless as its undead subject.

If you're familiar with "Twilight," you know the plot of "Vampires Suck." Becca (Jenn Proske), an angst-ridden teenager, moves to a new town populated by vampires. Disliked among her peers, she falls for a similarly anti-social teen named Edward Cullen (Matt Lanter), who, because of his Vampire linage, cannot love a mortal woman. Unhappy about their proposed union is Edward's vampire brethren, as well as Jacob (Chris Riggi), a shy and shirtless werewolf.

Directing and screenwriting team Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer lift their plot straight from "Twilight" in an effort to save time. They rely heavily on "Twilight" director Catherine Hardwicke’s filming techniques, and in lieu of making a joke of her style, the characters literally explain how her use of slow motion close-ups underscore a character’s yearnings.

Friedberg and Seltzer must have little faith in their material if they feel the need to point out their jokes so blatantly. Every quip explains what happens in a "Twilight" film, winks at the camera, and expects us to laugh because they noticed these characteristics. It's as if they know the script is no good and hope audiences are dumb enough not to realize it for themselves.

The team puts itself at a disservice by focusing so closely on "Twilight," mostly because there’s such a wealth of vampire material worth mocking. Still, 10 jokes about how angsty Becca is or how good Edward’s hair is doesn’t cut it.

If parody is the most sincere form of flattery, then "Vampires Suck" is parody in its most insincere form. As a spoof of vampire films, it barely understands what it's attempting to lampoon and even less knowledge of how to do so. Through its predictable gags on sparkly, good-looking, shirtless vampires, the film creates contrived lunacy, where the jokes are so painfully obvious, you'll wonder why they bothered making them in the first place.


Grade: F