Vampires Suck

There’s a pattern emerging here: when a Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer ‘comedy’ has the word ‘movie’ in the title (‘Scary Movie’, ‘Date Movie’), that gives the pair licence to chuck in random references to just about anything that’s been popular in the past five years. But when the film has an actual name (‘Meet the Spartans’, the new ‘Vampires Suck’), audiences should expect a pretty straightforward pastiche of a single, currently hot title, in this case ‘Twilight’. A shame, because a few broader references (‘Dracula’, ‘Buffy’, ‘True Blood’) might have made this punishing one-note trawl through the eminently spoofable tween-vamp saga slightly more watchable. Audiences know what to expect from Friedberg and Seltzer by now – pratfalls, fart gags, gay jokes, blunt sexual innuendo, an almost uncanny absence of wit, style or intelligence – and ‘Vampires Suck’ follows the formula to the letter. But let’s try to focus on the positives: there’s a faintly amusing whinge-rock pisstake over the opening titles, and six of those 82 minutes are taken up by the closing credits.