Let’s be honest. This Twilight thing is dragging on a bit. And if we have to hear one more evangelistic peep of the gospel according to Team Edward and Team Jacob, we’re all likely to impale ourselves with the remote control. But hallelujah – Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer fancy themselves our vampire redemption with their latest film, Vampires Suck.
That’s right – the very same Friedberg and Seltzer who delivered such gloriously unfunny turds as Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet The Spartans, and Disaster Movie – have mercifully returned to satisfy the blood thirst of the global minority of Twilight haters.
The film adopts the by now all too familiar plot of a teenage girl caught between two boys. Throw in a smear of blood and a pinch of vampire culture and le voilà – you have a half-baked spoof on the Gothic, vampire-themed films and television shows of late. Twilight and The Vampire Diaries, relax. Vampires Suck will bore your critics into submission.
Baffling though it may be, people are actually excited about Vampires Suck. It could be because Friedberg and Selzer are two of the six writers of the occasionally entertaining Scary Movie series. But it’s more likely that these people are simply idiots.
No matter how many crappy films this duo litters the filmscape with, people continue to flock to the next one. Friedberg/Seltzer understand their market, their audience, and the universal desire to laugh at the things that take themselves way too seriously. Certainly Twilight falls into this category and is primed for parody.
Unfortunately for Seltzerberg, parody is mistranslated as ill-conceived crude jokes, punchlines of a telegraphic quality, and downright insults to physical comedy. The fact that the often hilarious Ken Jeong (Community, The Hangover) is involved in this Gothic mess is simply tragic.
When all is said and done, the man who goes to see Vampires Suck, simply because it claims to protest against all that is Edward Cullen, is no better than the average Twilight fan. He has run head-first into the barely-concealed trap of a seeing a (very bad) film, made with purely moneymaking aspirations and the broadest of appeal, marketed directly at him.
Worst of all, Vampires Suck exploits the popularity of that “greatest of evil” – Twilight itself. Sure, Stephenie Meyer’s literary phenomenon has force-fed us through three extraordinarily awful films, with two more unfortunately on the way. But is that a justification for Seltzerberg to add an even more unnecessary, and undoubtedly worse film to the burgeoning canon of vampire films?
Words by Liam Camps
