Some of my more regular followers had previously complained about my review for Twilight: Eclipse, claiming that I’m far too critical of the entire series. Fortunately, this newest summer release helps justify some of my cynicism towards Stephanie Meyer’s novels…you know that you cannot take a franchise too seriously when it’s best entry and a spoof solely dedicated to mocking the series are released less than two months apart from each other. Unfortunately, the potential success and quality of Vampires Suck is immediately weakened by two major hindrances, the first being the fact that the spoof genre hasn’t had a decent entry in years, and the second being that the film itself is written and directed by the same duo responsible for the terrible spoof films that weakened the genre in the first place. Friedberg and Seltzer originally worked as screenwriters for the disappointing Spy Hard and the hugely successful Scary Movie (one of the last decent spoof films), but once they were given the reins as co-directors, they’ve produced nothing but a steady stream of insultingly bad films (Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, and Disaster Movie), each of which has less than a 7% approval rate on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Admittedly, I wasn’t expecting anything award- winning about Vampires Suck, but I’ve been making fun of the Twilight series so long, it seemed to make sense for me to see this newest parody.
Surprisingly, Vampires Suck actually represents a step forward in quality for Friedberg and Seltzer as directors, but given their track record, that’s really not saying much. The humor in the film isn’t shockingly clever, but it does highlight many of the ridiculous elements of the Twilight series, so if you’ve ever mocked anyone belonging to Team Edward or Team Jacob, you’re sure to enjoy a cheap laugh or two. That being said, I’m sure that any fans of the Twilight series will defend their obsession at any cost, so they are sure to absolutely hate Vampires Suck. Yet, this gap between those who would enjoy and those who would hate Vampires Suck represents a pretty big problem, as many of the funniest jokes within the film require that audience members have seen the parts of the Twilight movies that the jokes reference. So if you’ve never seen a Twilight movie, which I suspect is true of many of this parody’s target audience, you’re going to miss most of the humor present in the film. I enjoyed it, but I can’t in good conscience recommend that anyone go to the theater to see Vampires Suck…trust me, you can wait until it shows up on basic cable in a year or two.
For more information, please read the full review.
Overall Recommendation: Very Low
