VAMPIRES SUCK (AND SO DOES THIS MOVIE)
Review by Colleen Wanglund

Written and directed by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, who also gave us DISASTER MOVIE (2008), MEET THE SPARTANS (2008), and SCARY MOVIE (2000) (and all of its sequels), VAMPIRES SUCK is a movie spoof of TWILIGHT (2008) and NEW MOON (2009).  I’m not usually one for spoof movies (although I thought AIRPLANE! {1980} was hysterical) but I was apparently the only one brave enough here at CinemaKnifeFight.com to see it.  I decided to take my daughter Darlene with me because, unlike me, she has seen the movies it spoofs.  Needless to say, each of us came away with a different take on VAMPIRES SUCK.  She liked it more than I did.

For those of you who have never seen TWILIGHT (2008) or NEW MOON (2009), they’re basically teen angst/romance stories with vampires and werewolves thrown in.  Bella Swan moves to Forks, Washington where she meets Edward Cullen, the vampire and Jacob Black, the werewolf.  She falls in love with Edward who later decides they can’t be together and Jacob falls in love with her and Bella basically says sorry but no.  Bella is attacked by a vampire in TWILIGHT and Edward saves her.  Bella is attacked by another vampire in NEW MOON and Jacob saves her.  Bella starts to pursue some self-destructive behavior to get Edward’s attention, after he leaves her.  At some point, Edward thinks Bella has died and so he decides he doesn’t want to live anymore.  He goes to Italy to “expose” himself to the world, so the other vampires will kill him.  Bella shows up at the last minute to save him.  There you go—two movies’ worth of teen angst and romance trying to also pass itself off as horror—in a nutshell.  Did I mention that I wouldn’t even give the original movies (or books) a peek?

Now for the movie I actually saw.

In VAMPIRES SUCK, Becca Crane moves to Sporks, Washington where she meets Edward Sullen and Jacob White.  Becca falls in love with Edward, but then decides they can’t be together.  Jacob falls in love with Becca, but she tells him sorry but no.  Basically the same as above, but full of jokes—mostly lame ones.  There are the obvious jokes about how Edward looks—the white skin, the hair, the clothes—with Becca referring to Edward’s look at one point as “heroin chic”.  When we first see Edward he’s got a powder compact in his hands.  There are also the obvious jokes about Jacob being a werewolf—he chases cats, has a tail hanging out of his jeans, and a very hairy chest.  The more mature members of Jacob’s pack show up to help him save Becca and do a song and dance number that reminded me of the old Chippendale dancers.  No one actually changes into a werewolf.  The scenes with Becca’s father Frank were not funny and almost uncomfortable to watch.  Upon bringing Becca home from the airport Frank tells her he kept her room the same as she left it (she lived with her mother in Nevada).  He opens the door and there is a crib and the bedroom is full of all kinds of dolls including Dad’s blow-up sex doll.  That scene came after her father commented on how grown up Becca is by pointing out her breast size.  Other lame jokes include Frank (the sheriff) using Jacob as a bloodhound to track a killer through the woods after a fisherman ends up dead, and Becca’s paper cut turning into a full on bleeder in front of Edward’s family (also vampires).  I believe the line was “I think I hit an artery.”  There’s also a scene where Becca is walking to her truck parked by “dangerous” bikers and she imagines Edward telling her that they’re dangerous, and she gets an empty beer can to the head…boring.  There’s also a very tasteless scene where Becca takes off her nightgown and is wearing a black pleather light-up bra and panties, complete with garters and black stockings.

What I liked about VAMPIRES SUCK are the three young stars.  Jenn Proske plays Becca Crane and plays her exactly like Kristin Stewart’s character Bella in the TWILIGHT films.  She had her mannerisms down to a tee; all of the ticks, over-blinking eyes, fluttery lips, and constantly pushing her hair behind her ear.  Jenn Proske didn’t need to exaggerate anything.  She was completely annoying and she was great at it!  Matt Lanter was quite funny as the sparkly Edward, exaggerating his Emo style without going too overboard.  The scenes where he’s riding a Segway were quite amusing. Chris Riggi was just as funny as Jacob, who is somewhat serious in the TWILIGHT movies but played it off here with the right amount comedy.  I found myself actually laughing the first time Jacob saw a cat and darted after it.  The writers had him as more of a dog than a werewolf….almost like a cute little puppy.  I also enjoyed seeing the tweens wearing Team Edward or Team Jacob tee shirts beating the crap out of each other with shovels and two by fours during the high school prom, which is where the climax of the spoof takes place.  The prom’s theme is vampires, and it’s meant to mimic the Saint Salvatore festival in Italy where the actual NEW MOON climax takes place.  There’s a song that Becca listens to on her iPod that is basically an Emo teen’s mantra—“my life is awful, I’m so depressed, why can’t I have an alternative boyfriend?—“it was so good they should put it on iTunes.

Darlene’s take on VAMPIRES SUCK was a bit different than mine.  I heard her laughing a bit more than I did.  She thought it was pretty funny, but not hilarious.  Darlene thinks you should see TWILIGHT and NEW MOON to really get the jokes in this spoof.  She points out a quote by Becca early in the movie that Darlene says describes Bella, the original character exactly—“I’m boring, have no real personality and yet every hot guy loves me.”  As far as the actors go, Darlene agrees with me about Jenn Proske—thinks she’s even better than Kristen Stewart.  She thought Matt Lanter was just like Edward with the comedic twist, and that Chris Riggi as Jacob “was cute.”  My other daughter Erica said the only purpose for Jacob in the original movies WAS to be cute.  My girls were on opposite sides of the “Edward or Jacob” argument at one time.

This was not a movie I would have gone to see on my own.  I really did take a bullet for the team on this one.  As Darlene said, you should probably have seen the TWILIGHT movies to get all of the jokes in VAMPIRES SUCK.  I didn’t see them (thankfully) and thought the movie overall was pretty lame.  I will say, though that I’m very picky when it comes to comedy.  I grew up on Monty Python, the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello, and Mel Brooks films, so I can be pretty hard to please.   One big plus for me, however was seeing Dave Foley from the old KIDS IN THE HALL comedy sketch show as the school’s principal.  Did I mention that the school’s sports teams were the Bloodsuckers?  Eh, it wasn’t that funny.  I thought the young kids sitting a few rows behind me were funnier.  They were just giggling their asses off through the whole movie.  I was surprised that there were young kids there.  Between some of the jokes and the final words of the film (involving the F word) I’m at a loss to explain how VAMPIRE SUCKS got a PG-13 rating.  At least I only paid the matinee price—although nowadays it isn’t all that much cheaper, is it?  I’ll remember this one guys.

This is one movie you can skip.

© Copyright 2010 by Colleen Wanglund