Vampires Suck Review

Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 08.19.2010

Will the vampire craze give Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer of Meet the Spartans fame a chance to finally be funny? Find out inside...

Directed by: Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer
Written by: Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer

Starring:
Jenn Proske - Becca Crane
Matt Lanter - Edward Sullen
Diedrich Bader - Frank Crane
Christopher Riggi - Jacob White
Anneliese van der Pol - Jennifer
Arielle Kebbel - Rachel
B.J. Britt - Antoine
Charlie Weber - Jack
Kelsey Ford - Iris
Krystal Mayo - Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Ken Jeong - Daro



Running Time: 88 minutes
Rated PG-13 for crude sexual content, comic violence, language and teen partying

It's been difficult to be a fan of parody films for the last several years. The genre, which was once the purview of luminaries as the Zuckers and Jim Abrahams who brought us Airplane, The Naked Gun and Top Secret, has fallen into a state of depressingly bad tripe. Most of it is relegated to direct-to-video fare such as Adam Jay Epstein and Andrew Jacobson's Extreme Movie or Bo Zenga's distinctly unfunny horror parody Stan Helsing while the theatrical releases we have seen have been along the lines of Dance Flick and this year's Saturday Night Live-related bomb MacGruber.

Ask anyone who has done the most damage to the genre though and you'll invariably get an answer of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. The filmmaking duo got their start with the first Scary Movie and then decided to branch out on their own. The results have been films that have, without variance, ended up dominating the "Worst Of" lists for each year in which they've been released from Date Movie and Epic Movie to Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie. The failure of the last of those to turn a significant profit gave us hope that the duo would be forced to make real films or leave Hollywood behind, but it was perhaps too much to hope for. As it turns out Friedberg and Seltzer were simply waiting for the next big target to come along. With the rise of the vampire in film and television they had that target and this week, we see the release of Vampires Suck starring Jenn Proske, Matt Lanter, Diedrich Bader and Christopher Riggi.

The film follows the basic plotline of the first two Twilight films. Becca Crane (Proske) is a depressed girl who has been sent by her mom to live with her father, sheriff Frank Crane (Bader) in the town of Sporks. She immediately finds friends at her high school, such as the bubbly Jennifer (van der Pol), but she brushes them off most of the time in exchange for sharing longing looks with Edward Sullen (Lanter). Edward and his family are vampires, which doesn't sit well with Becca's childhood friend Jacob White (Riggi). Jacob is going through a few changes of his own and wants to be with Becca. Meanwhile a trio of vampires is killing people in Sporks, and while everyone else seems to know what's going on Frank can't figure it out. Tensions and drama come to a head at Becca's prom, which is themed to mimic a vampire-hunting celebration that takes place in Spain. Along the way, the movie tries to poke fun at other vampire-themed projects like Daybreakers, True Blood, The Vampire Diaries and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, not to mention Jersey Shore, Alice in Wonderland, Real Housewives, Secret Life of the American Teenager, iCarly, Sex and the City 2, the Black Eyed Peas, Taylor Swift and Lady GaGa.

These days, it seems as if the whole point of going to a Friedberg/Seltzer spoof film is to see just how bad it's going to be. It's therefore surprising to say that Vampires Suck starts out vaguely promising. The writer/directors start the film off with a take-off of the climactic scene from New Moon, which turns into a skewering of psychotic Twilight fans. Even at this point there are some concerning moments including the silly use of a disco ball as a censoring device and Ken Jeong looking instantly miscast as Daro the head of the evil Zolturi, but there are some mild amusement points to be had. It then switches to some moderately well-done riffing on Becca and her excessive teen angst, with an iPod that consists solely of playlists titled different variants of "I Hate Life." Friedberg and Seltzer have definitely found a source that is easy to mock and that allows them a little bit of leeway in the opening moments, during which they manage to surprise a little.

Unfortunately, this surprise quickly fades as one thing becomes apparent. The filmmakers have admittedly made growth as comedians since the days of Meet the Spartans and Date Movie. They understand what's funny about the material they're making fun of. The problem lies in the fact that they don't know how to make these targets funny in their own way. There are gags about how obvious it is that the Sullens are vampires and Sporks is plagued with the undead—and frankly, how obvious every overtone in the Twilight films are from who Bella will end up with to how predictable the plotline is—and these are funny for a little while. By fifteen minutes into the eighty-eight minute running time it's played out though. Every time the film tries to be funny by breaking the third wall or being self-aware, it's just another clumsy bashing over the head with a gag stick that doesn't really cause any laughs. There are ways to do this that could have come off as very amusing, but this film never reaches that.

Instead of clever writing and new twists on criticisms that have been made on Twilight for years now, we instead get stupid and obvious gags comparing werewolves to dogs (including having multiple nipples) or throwing out as many pop culture references as possible. Friedberg and Seltzer have clearly not yet learned that pop culture references will instantly date your film and make them passé down the line. Even the best parody films have used these kinds of jokes, but what makes the Zucker and Abrahams films work is that they use those in tiny amounts and instead paint their humor with broad, more universal brush strokes. Most of the pop culture stuff here might work in the current era—it doesn't, but it might. But take a look back at Meet the Spartans and the Chris Crocker guy—you know, Mr. "Leave Britney Alone!"—to see how outdated it will look only a few years down the line. While one particular bit that pokes at the Kardashians is smile-worthy, it will likely fall under the same rule. That says a lot about how they view their films and what kind of hope they have—it's a quick cash grab and little more. Frankly, it feels like such for the whole of the hour and a half.

That isn't to say this film isn't without a few small legitimately humorous moments. It's simply that they hit you over the head with the jokes and then over-explain them to make sure that you understand. That robs it of any potential laugh, the same way that Mike Myers does when he pauses and winks at the camera in The Love Guru. One moment I legitimately laughed at involves the characters going to see Breaking Dawn--another self-aware moment, and walking out, the characters spoil what happens in that movie. And yes, I do mean that they legitimately spoil it. I can't decide if that's the most hilarious part of the movie or just blatant sadism. It is quite possibly both, but I did laugh which automatically puts it above most of the duo's other work.

The 411: The latest parody from Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, Vampires Suck, takes aim at an obvious target that anyone could get some laughs out of. As a result, it manages to be better than the previous efforts by the moviemaking team to date. However, that certainly doesn't mean that it is good by any stretch. Friedberg and Seltzer still fail to understand how to make the comedy work and instead populate their spoof with dated pop culture references, cheap toilet humor, obvious jokes and a few examples of horribly bad miscasting. There are many potential jokes to be had with source material like this to riff on but the script instead harps on the same things again and again which results in an irritatingly one-note spoof that fails far off the mark. This may not be Meet the Spartans level of bad, but as you might have guessed it's certainly not worth your time.

Final Score:  3.0   [ Bad ]