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What it's about:
A spoof on the first two Twilight Saga movies, Vampires Suck follows the exact same plot. You know the score: moody teenage girls, moody toothless vampires, moody shirtless werewolves and huge dollops of moody unrequited, unconsummated love.
What we thought:
How hard is to make fun of Twilight? No, really? I know that it has a huge following among teenage girls and fans of romantic fang-fiction, to the point that it is probably the biggest pop culture phenomenon since the much more deserving Harry Potter. But, come on, for most of us it's a franchise with a gigantic "Kick Me" sign hanging off its pale, glittery ass.
Don't believe me? Let's turn, once again, to that most authoritative of tools: The World Wide Web. For every "Team Jacob" or "Team Edward" fansite that pops up, there's a parody website waiting just around the corner to take the piss out of Twilight's laughably lame bad-boy love interests. For every YouTube video that portrays these overwrought love affairs through sickly montages and sicklier pap songs, there are videos like the one where, through the magic of editing, Buffy, our (or, at least, my) most favourite of vampire slayers, puts a very permanent end to Edward's incessant stalker-like brooding. And don't even get me started on the wealth of material that comedy websites like Cracked or The Onion are able to milk out of this franchise that simply never stops giving. Twilight is, in short, a very easy comedy target.
Why then is it that Vampires Suck, the first official Twilight "spoof" film, fails to raise even a single titter? The really-asking-for-it title is bad enough but, most impressive of all, Vampires Suck manages to be less funny than Twilight itself. That's right, Twilight, that most humourless of doomed romance stories has more laughs than its supposed parody. I'll grant you that most of those laughs were entirely unintentional but I'll take unintentional guffaws over embarrassed groans any day of the week.
Case in point: there's this incredibly moronic scene at the end of New Moon (or Twilight 2, for those not keeping score) where our heartbroken vampire tries to commit suicide by having the vampire authority execute him after breaking the cardinal vampire rule of exposing himself in public (not as kinky as it sounds). Aside for it being a ridiculously complicated suicide plan (seriously, had the bloke really never heard of a good ol' stake through the heart?) the way he decides to expose his true nature is by stripping off his clothes in the sunlight of a very public place. This would have been a stupid plan if he was a traditional vampire but for a Twilight vampire this is even more idiotic. Don't forget Twilight vampires don't go up in smoke when exposed to sunlight – they sparkle – so the general reaction to his, shall we say, "coming out" would be less "holy crap, Ma, a vampire!" and more "holy crap, Ma, that topless bloke is covered in glitter – I must be at the wrong parade!".
I literally laughed out loud throughout much of this head-slappingly stupid display but when Vampires Suck tackled the very same scene by throwing every comedy device at the screen (the meta-satire of warring teenage Twilight fans, the "side-splitting" slapstick of our heroine jumping on a bunch of by-standers Super Mario style, and the completely nonsensical covering of the naked vampire's man-junk with a disco ball), I didn't even crack a smile.
Every. Single. Joke. In the entire film fell just as flat.
On the plus side, it's less than 90 minutes long so the red hot rage/crippling depression that Vampires Suck will undoubtedly cause in even the most hardened of masochists will probably only be temporary. All I know is that another half an hour of this imbecilic nonsense and I probably would never have escaped the cinema in one piece. As it is, I was left with a newfound appreciation for The Twilight Saga and who the hell in their right mind wants that?
Avoid. Avoid like the bloody plague.
