Vampires Suck – review

Directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer

Release date: 2010

Contains spoilers

Vampire’s Suck is a spoof but, unfortunately it decides to spoof not the genre as a whole but Twilight and New Moon, with a few side genre references that are blink or you’ll miss them.

It does actually do a fine job of condensing roughly four hours of cinematic dirge into roughly eighty minutes. Unfortunately the Twilight fan base is unlikely to see the joke – as much is at their expense. Those who are not fans will find themselves, probably, wondering why they are watching it – the subject matter is limited.

one fang

The story begins with a parody of the opening scene of New Moon and Becca Crane (Jenn Proske) trying to stop Edward Sullen (Matt Lanter) exposing his sparkly vampness to the world. It is here we get a True Blood reference as a vampire is drinking a Tru Blood. The same vampire has a single front fang – here’s an idea, opening the Tru Blood with it might have connected the elements… no… just a thought…

see me sparkle

Edward’s glitter ball groin was momentarily amusing but not sustainable humour and the actual main amusing moment in the entire opening was the appearance of teen girls from Team Edward and Team Jacob beating the living crap out of each other. However, that aside, as an opening it wasn’t great.

vampire attack

Becca has moved to Sporks, a town with an apparent vampire fetish/problem. Indeed, on the town boundary she sees a vampire chowing down on a woman. In the town she sees a down and out vampire who will work for blood – a daybreakers reference that wasn’t nearly as amusing as the darkly satirical original moment.

full-on Kristen tantrum

So, we’ll take a moment to mention ultra emo Becca. Jenn Proske is the highlight of the film, mimicking Kristen Stewart absolutely perfectly, voice, mannerisms and all, but with a presence Stewart could only wish for. Great casting, as was Chris Riggi as Jacob who certainly looked a lot like Taylor Lautner. Better casting than was shown when, for a brief five or ten seconds, Buffy appeared with actress Krystal Mayo looking so unlike Sarah Michelle Gellar that Buffy had to be written on her shirt.

Edward is a Jonas Brother

Anyway, Becca goes to Sporks high school and makes an instant connection with Edward Sullen, one of the adopted Sullen kids. She tries desperately to work out what he is, whilst the prom is planned with a vampire theme and they study the Vampire Diaries in biology simply because vampires are trendy. Still with me… Good… anyway, she realises that Edward must be a Jonas Brother…

vampire squirrel

Yes the jokes were coming thick, fast and not massively funny, but that is the problem with parody and spoof. They can miss. I must admit I was rather taken with Edward attacking a squirrel to prove to Becca that he was a dangerous predator and the squirrel turning, growing fangs and going for Edward’s neck. Indeed the biggest shame of this was the fact that there was an odd moment that made me chuckle. For the main it was just too much Twilight spoof and had a self-limiting humour span. There have been better spoofs, with wider reference basis, that have appeared on the net in five minute slots.

All in all this was rather weak as a comedy, self limiting but showcased the finest Kirsten Stewart imitation ever committed to film. It was also better than Taintlight. 2.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.