Vampires Suck

Director: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer

Writers: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer

Genre: Comedy

Tagline: Vampires Suck

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Review: After making the woefully regrettable decision to pay money to see “Epic Movie”, I had vowed to stay far away from this movie and any other with the word “Movie” in the title. But, because I am faint of heart and/or an idiot, I allowed myself to be talked into watching a leaked version online because A) it was actually pretty funny, according to friends who had seen it already, B) it was only about 70 minutes long, and C) this Edward was actually hot. After watching it for myself, I would agree on all three counts (especially C….daaaaamn). Its no great cinematic achievement, but for a devoted Twilight hater such as myself, it was worth a chuckle or two.

Sure, “Vampires Suck” meets many of the same pitfalls other parody movies do. It operates under the delusion that anyone out of diapers thinks that a character being bludgeoned over the head time and time again for absolutely no reason is comedy gold. It often relies on stupid pop culture jokes (Look! A Jersey Shore reference! Its funny because it is a Jersey shore reference!) and unoriginal gross-out humor (its funny because you want to vomit! Haha!). But, so help me if I didn find myself laughing at the way the film mercilessly mocks everything laughable about the Twilight movies, a series that, lets face it, lends itself pretty easily to parody. In fact, all “Vampires Suck” really had to do was recreate the first two Twilight films pretty much scene-for-scene, tweaking here and there to make the scenes only slightly more ridiculous than the originals. The result is actually a pretty clever send-up of the ludicrously over-the-top melodrama that Twilight lovers eat up. This film holds a mirror up to pretty much everything laughable about the series that proves that a wildly successful book/movie franchise does not necessarily need a “plot”: the rabidity of its fan base; the shameless parade of shirtless males; the idea that teenage Stephanie Meyer…er, I mean, Bella, would be the object of every hot guys lust despite being a mopy sourpuss with no trace of a personality; the insistence that Robert Pattinson is “sexy”. The actress who plays Bella, or “Becca,” as she is renamed, does a killer job parodying Kristen Stewarts mannerisms (hair-tucking, downward gazes, constant lower-lip biting) by which I mean she mimics them exactly and everyone laughs at them because they are stupid. Mocking Twilight is not exactly hard to do, but I have to say this film does it quite cleverly at many points. Ill even say that the ending is magnificent.

Needless to say, “Vampires Suck” is for members of Team I Want a Boy Who Doesn Want to Kill Me only, as Im sure Twilight fans would not appreciate being forced to acknowledge that the thing they love is dumber than a sack of fruit fly larvae. However, since like I said the movie is pretty much just a re-creation of the original Twilight movies, many of the jokes are best appreciated having actually seen them. So youll probably like this movie if you are not a Twilight fan, but have actually seen the movies because A) you were dragged there by a girl whose pants you really, REALLY wanted to get into, B) you were stoned, walked into the wrong theater, and failed to realize that it wasn The Hangover until it was too late, or C) you are self-loathing and willingly subjected yourself to them out of morbid curiosity (like me).

So if you hate Twilight and everything it stands for, take a break from your violent (yet strangely erotic) fantasies about Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner and go see “Vampires Suck”. It will ease your tortured soul, and maybe, just maybe, restore a molecule of faith in the parody genre. It couldn possibly be worse than “Meet the Spartans”.