VAMPIRES SUCK was not on my list of movies to watch. When I received it for review, I was full of dread. As if you have to question why. The trailer was nothing but easy laughs from two directors known for crapfest after crapfest. I’m sure statements like these would be a compliment for them. They attempt to aim for something along the lines of a Mel Brooks film, the result makes them the twin Uwe Boll’s of parody.
Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer follow the same formula year after year. Find whatever was most popular in pop culture and deliver a poor attempt at poking fun at it. This year it was the topic that everyone grew sick of—Vampires. To be more exact, THE TWILIGHT SAGA. In VAMPIRES SUCK, they throw together TWILIGHT and its sequel, NEW MOON then add some silly twists to their interpretation of the story.
To be honest with you there were a few times that I did laugh. Many of those laughs were due to the presence of Diedrich Bader who plays Becca’s pervy dad, Frank. One of his first comments to his long absent daughter was a mention on how big her boobs had grown. Classy, huh? Not that these films ever aim to be. In the opening scene when Becca runs through the fountain to try and stop Edward from exposing himself, a group of scantily clad women in red bikinis dance in Jello. As I said before, there are a lot of obvious and easy gags here. Most of them seem to play to the demographic of prepubescent boys all snickering about “boobies” and sex jokes.
I won’t bother wasting time going into the story with you. If you know the basic plot of the TWILIGHT films that’s all you need to know. Matt Lanter also known as the voice of Anakin Skywalker for STAR WARS: CLONE WARS offers a more realistic approach to Edward Sullen. The whole time he’s raising an eyebrow at how strange Becca is. Do all teenage girls act the way she does? Of course not! Girls get love sick from time to time, but it’s only puppy love. Twi-creator Stephenie Meyer would have us thinking otherwise. She’s built an empire on projecting her own confused feelings about true love onto the young girls who read her books. With the songs of Taylor Swift, we may as well just fear that generation of girls when they get older. All their hopes and dreams will be shattered when they find out that love is not really like that. Wait, did this movie actually strike up intelligent conversation? Quickly divert, moving on…
There’s also a fairly decent performance given by Jenn Proske, the little brunette lady that plays Becca. I’ll tell you one thing for sure; this girl has her Kristen Stewart impression down. She’s constantly shoving her hair behind her ears and could actually benefit from biting her lip a little more. There were several moments when Proske sounded exactly Stewart. One person I felt bad for was Ken Jeong. He’s hardly in the film and on top of that the majority of his lines ended up on the cutting room floor. At least as part of the Volturi, he makes an effort towards showing how ineffective the elder baddie vampires really are in the TWILIGHT films.
The film manages to get one thing right, vampires do suck, or at least have been lately. Since when were vampires longing for souls and lusting after teenage girls? It’s as if the Buffy and Angel chronicles remained simply that and made a spin-off show in their honor. At least the dialogue on Buffy was good. TWILIGHT just shows how truly mindless entertainment has become. These are the days when you can pick any idea off the pile and sell it to the blind masses. Much like how this movie got made and the ones before it. The “no one cares” attitude has cast a dark shadow on the mediums we use to escape. But dang it, there I go again giving intelligent discussion to a review on VAMPIRES SUCK. Despite all that, it still doesn’t help the film.
Video (1.85:1 Widescreen) : The video quality on this is unbalanced. When a close-up shot appears on the screen, it looks great. You can see every missed white make-up smear on Edward Sullen’s face. As a whole, especially during the best scenery shots, the transfer is grainy.
Audio (ex: 5.1 DTS-HD): I can tell you that the audio fairs better than the video. That said, it’s not fantastic. The lows are too low and the highs are too high. Pretty average audio track.
Deleted Scenes (12:34): These nine scenes would have fit in real nicely with the rest of the film. They’re basically just as un-amusing. The one scene with Diedrich Bader is the only real highlight.
Gag Reel (3:51): They should have just used all the gag reel moments and substituted them for the actual movie.