Directors: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer
Starring: Jenn Proske, Matt Lanter, Diedrich Bader, Chris Riggi, Ken Jeong

From the ‘creative talent’ behind such insightful and hilarious jokes like, ‘hurr hurr, Jennifer Lopez has a big bum’, ‘hurr hurr, the Spartans look a bit gay in that one film’ and ‘hurr hurr, Sarah Jessica Parker isn’t conventionally attractive’ comes a whole new film and a whole new low. Without a doubt, Vampires Suck is a sign of the end times, a piece of crap that barely qualifies as a film. This is so devoid of entertainment value that you should ask for your money back even if you haven’t watched it.

Becca (Jenn Proske) moves to Sporks (HA) to live with her dad where she meets Edward Sullen (Matt Lanter) and falls in love with him. However, he turns out to be a vampire and soon dumps Becca and moves away, forcing her to hang out with Jacob White (Christopher N Riggi). However, Jacob turns out to be a werewolf and Becca’s heart yearns for Edward. Everything collides for some reason at the Prom, where everyone is dressed in red capes to save the production filming in Italy. Edward turns Becca into a vampire. The end.

Did you laugh at that plot summary? No, of course not. But the above paragraph is roughly four hundred times funnier than the film – after all, there had to be some thought put into it to make it flow and work coherently, which is far more than can be said for Vampires Suck. It’s a film made by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, which should immediately tell you that slowly dying alone in the woods is much, much more preferable than sitting through ninety minutes of slow torture.

Here’s a small snippet from the script:

This is what you can expect from Vampires Suck: a series of scenes where people reference random outside products or celebrities for the sake of making a stupid low-brow joke. The film is basically a copy-and-paste job from Twilight and New Moon, with references made to other popular films and TV shows, like Dear John and Gossip Girl. The funniest this film will get is when you attempt to remove your own eyes with the drinking straw in the overpriced Coke cup.

Any ‘jokes’ that might have been funny when written down are completely mauled in their delivery. The cast posses the comic timing of dying sea animals and the editing is so sloppy that quick gags seem to take an eternity to get anywhere. This is the cinematic equivalent of accidentally crapping out your insides and being forced to look at your entrails as you lay among them, whimpering and crying.

There are two points that really need to be praised, and quickly: firstly, Jenn Proske has Kristen Stewart’s mannerisms down perfectly. Secondly, Ken Jeong – one of the most brilliant but underused comedy actors currently working – appears in a small role. While Jeong is clearly doing it for the money, he appears to be taking the piss out of the entire movie with his performance, and that makes him ever greater than he already is.

A long time ago, the humble parody was the greatest form of comedy in the world, destroying Leslie Nielsen’s acting career and entertaining countless millions with classics such as Airplane! or The Naked Gun, Hot Shots and Police Squad – hell, even Top Secret has its moments. The thing that these films understood was that in order to be funny, the target really had to deserve parody and there had to be a series of timeless jokes that would always make audiences laugh. If that seems a little pretentious, compare ‘I am serious… and don’t call me Shirley’ to a joke about Amy Winehouse looking like a Neanderthal and ask yourself which one will still make sense to your children.

What Friedberg and Seltzer gloriously fail to understand in any of their films is that the targets they go after are not ripe for parody. Everyone with eyes had a giggle about how gay the Spartans looked during 300 – they didn’t need a film made entirely around the premise. Friedberg and Seltzer became known after Scary Movie, which is possibly the world’s most unnecessary parody, considering how hysterical the original Scream is. The very fact that they decided that simply copying Sacha Baron Cohen’s peerless Borat would make their film funny in its own right is probably a hint that they need to be tried as witches and burned at the stake.

Once again Friedberg and Seltzer have managed to miss the point – the entire Twilight saga doesn’t need a parody. Anyone with half a brain cell can see that those films are utterly hilarious and will have already made every single joke in this film with their friends on the way home. ‘Hey, didn’t those werewolves seem really gay?’ ‘Yeah, and what about that vampire council? Were they camp or what?’ ‘Bella’s really stupid, why would she kill herself after her first relationship fails?’ These are the points Vampires Suck harps on about near-constantly. In fact, because the film is only based on the first two Twilight movies, there are whole swathes of story left unresolved simply because the third film hadn’t come out by the time this went into production.

Any deep or thoughtful point you might be able to come up with concerning Stephanie Meyer’s bafflingly popular series is completely ignored. Potential jokes – like how Bella represents the domestically abused girlfriend, how ludicrous it would be to even consider suicide after your first crush dumps you and how there is literally no reason for Bella and Edward for be attracted to each other – are all eschewed in favour of having a stupid one-note joke about how Lady Gaga is a bit weird or having pointless physical comedy because people punching each other is ‘hilarious’. There’s even a decade-late joke about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is so unfashionable that the actress has to wear a t-shirt with the word ‘BUFFY’ on it because you’ll have forgotten her. The phrase ‘lowest common denominator’ is actually far too good to describe this film.

You already knew this film was going to be bad, but maybe you didn’t know exactly how bad. Vampires Suck is a cancerous tumour upon cinema that will destroy the souls of all those unfortunate enough to wander across it. The only way to enjoy the film is to try and lower your IQ to a level where you find grass funny. Other than that, walk the hell away as fast as you can. If you ignore Friedberg and Seltzer, eventually they’ll go away. If you do pay for this, you’ll find that the joke is ultimately on you. Hurr hurr.

U (Ungraded)