Vampires Suck review

Spoof veterans Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg set their sights on The Twilight Saga with Vampires Suck, their latest low budget comedy movie.

Becca Crane moves to the sleepy town of Sporks and finds herself torn between two men. There’s sparkling vampire Edward, whose commitment issues stem from his bloodsucking family trying to eat his prospective girlfriends, and his dogged rival for her affections, Jacob. Hilarity ensues on a rollercoaster through pop culture and teenage vampire relationships.

Oh, I should probably mention at this point in the review that Vampires Suck is utter dogshit. Surprise!

I think, to some extent, the world has been waiting for a decent Twilight spoof, but boy, this is not it. Hell, if the real films were intended as satire, they’d be lauded as the best comedy films ever, with great deadpan performances from Robert Pattinson and all concerned. In the hands of Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg, this spoof isn’t even as funny as just watching Twilight or New Moon.

Early on, Seltzer and Friedberg hit on the fact that Bella Swan moves to a new high school and is universally loved and accepted from day one. The fact that they lampoon this would give the impression that they do have some satirical instinct. But then you see how doppelgänger Becca, played with a nice Kristen Stewart impression by Jenn Proske, is pelted with eggs, water bombs and general abuse from the popular kids from the second that she arrives. It’s at this most elementary point that I realised such analysis is like trying to spot Rorschach patterns when monkeys splatter their faeces across the wall.

I haven’t seen Meet The Spartans or Disaster Movie, because I decided at the time that I didn’t need that pain in my life, but everything bad about the writers (and I use the term very loosely), is still here. Admittedly, they’ve toned down the number of wacky pop culture asides to a mere three, all of which are in the trailer. If your life was enriched by those references to Lady Gaga, Jersey Shore or Alice In Wonderland, you’re not missing much else if you skip the other 76 minutes in cinemas.

Correspondingly, I’ll concede only three positive points about the whole film. Number one, the aforementioned Stewart impression by Jenn Proske. Number two, the cinematography and look of Twilight is captured fairly well, considering Javier Aguirresarobe is very good and the crew on this one are a troupe of performing idiots who don’t know when to shut up and go away forever. Number three, it’s not as toe-curlingly bad as Epic Movie. There you go, but be assured that none of these are reasons to see the film. Ever.

Just out of curiosity, how do you spell a scream of frustration out, phonetically? “Aaaaaaaargh”? “Nnnnnnnnngh”? “Waaaaaaagh”? I wanted to start the review with such an exclamation, but I don’t think even onomatopoeia can sum up the soul crushing, heartbreaking, head sploding angst I experienced when I realised that someone had given Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg more money to make a new spoof film.

Worse than that, Vampires Suck already made its budget back domestically, over in the States. More people opted for this over Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, presumably because those who like Twilight will shell out for anything related, and because those who don’t like Twilight thought you might get some laughs from a mockery of it. Either way, it did well for its budget, and financial success on this scale only means that they’ll do it again in six months or so.

I can’t explain it, but in a way like no terrible movie before it, I quite genuinely felt sick after watching this. Maybe it was just so demoralising that my stomach was in revolt, or maybe I just coincidentally ate something bad before I saw it, but Vampires Suck is abominable. It’s vile, and reprehensible, and witless, and I have to make up words to describe how bad it is. It’s harangamic. Meaning ‘it’s not as funny as the actual Twilight films’.

Seltzer and Friedberg seem to be trying harder with the jokes, if the trailers for those movies I missed are anything to go by, but their attempts are just plain weird. Vampires Suck doesn’t just have bad jokes, you see.

That crack about the three vampires from the first film looking like the Black Eyed Peas is distended into the Cam Gigandet surrogate explaining why the joke doesn’t work. There isn’t a guy who looks like him in the Black Eyed Peas. So, not only do our writers give you a bad joke, they do you the service of explaining why it’s bad.

Look, it’s bad, alright? I don’t think I had to write 800 words just to get to this point of saying that Vampires Suck is the worst film of 2010, by quite a distance. It’s such a ringer for that dubious honour that I’m exhausted from typing up this rant. Nevertheless, it’s cathartic for me, because this was the longest film with such a short running time I’ve had to sit through since Jonah Hex.

Yes, Aaron and Jason, your production values have improved by some infinitesimal margin. Now please, please go away again.