Since 2015, I’ve been marking Halloween by reviewing the Twilight movies. Last year, I finished them. Or did I?!

…well, yes, I did. But here’s something of a coda: a spoof of the series, produced in 2010 when Twilight was still at (more or less) the height of its popularity. At the time, making a Twilight spoof must have seemed a great idea — it was popular, but also widely lampooned. The only problem is, isn’t Twilight already so fundamentally ridiculous as to be unspoofable? Maybe; maybe not… but when you put Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer in charge, you’re not likely to get great results.

There’s a fair chance you won’t recognise Friedberg & Seltzer’s names, but you might know their body of work. They started out as co-writers of the Leslie Nielsen-starring spoof Spy Hard, but more significant is their second movie: Scary Movie, the 2000 horror spoof that provoked a whole string of similar genre-centric spoofs over the next 15 years. They graduated to directing with 2006’s Date Movie, which IMDb voters think is the 23rd worst movie ever made, and they followed that with spoofs Epic Movie (the 12th worst movie ever made), Meet the Spartans (the 22nd worst movie ever made), Disaster Movie (living up to its name, the #1 worst movie ever made), The Starving Games (the 45th worst movie ever made), and Superfast! (by this point, too few people are watching their movies to even get the score low enough to appear on that ranking — I don’t know about you, but I hadn’t even heard of Superfast until today, and it came out in 2015).

In the middle of all that sits Vampires Suck, only the 46th worst movie ever made — by Friedberg & Seltzer’s standards, a success! Now, I’m not about to mount a full-blown defence of the movie, but I will say it’s certainly not one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. Indeed, just within the subgenre of 21st-century genre spoofs, I’d say Superhero Movie is much worse (though, re-reading my review, it sounds pretty similar to my thoughts on Vampires Suck). Sure, there are plenty of cheap, uninspired, crass, and rip-off gags, but some of it also made me laugh, so it’s not a total washout. It’s never as funny as the real thing at it’s funniest (Face Punch forever!), but it wasn’t as uninspired as I expected.

I keep calling these “genre spoofs” but, as with Superhero Movie (and so, I extrapolate, all the other Movie movies), it’s not truly a spoof of an entire genre, but instead sticks closely to one film; or, in this case, two films (only the first two Twilights had been released at the time, so it bundles them both in). Every scene is a recreation of one from the original, but with a comedic twist. As such, I’m not sure whether it works better if you have seen the original (so you know exactly what’s being referenced) or if you haven’t (so you don’t realise just how simplistic all its ideas are). I guess it’s aimed at the former kind of viewer, though. I mean, some parts are barely more than repeats of stuff from the real film framed in such a way as to say “isn’t this stupid?” Some of the pop culture references in gags are painfully dated, too. That’s always a risk with this kind of comedy, but then I guess they’re not expecting longevity — if they were, they might put more effort in.

On the other hand, highlights include Jenn Proske doing a very good job of imitating Kristen Stewart’s acting style. It’s unmistakable, but a relatively subtle and consistent bit of humour; or, at any rate, not as overblown a gag as… everything else the film is doing. And if you listen, the lyrics in some of the music tracks are decent parodies of the kind of songs Twilight was soundtracked with (“I feel so lonely / Nobody gets me”). Other times, you’re left to provide your own punchline. “We’re just like any other normal American family,” the head vampire comments; “except, of course, we have no souls and we walk the Earth trying to satisfy an unquenchable thirst for blood.” That’s it for the film, but you’ll probably be thinking, “sounds like a normal American to me.” Arguably the best joke is in the title — and whether you think it’s moderately amusing or an obvious and tired pun, I’d argue my assessment holds true.

At the end of my review of Breaking Dawn Part 2, I pondered if I’d wasted my time watching the Twilight Saga — I mainly engaged with it because of its prominent place in pop culture, but that seems to have quickly faded. The same thought, then, is even more true of a middle-of-the-road spoof of the series. If you’re a dyed-in-the-wool Twilight fan, I guess a pisstake is not going to agree with you; but if you despise the main series, this kind of close parody is as bad as the real thing. It did tickle me at times, but I won’t be watching it again.

* For its theatrical release, the BBFC suggested cuts to five scenes to earn the film a 12A. That cut was also released on DVD and Blu-ray, but it’s uncut and a 15 on streaming. In the US, there’s an unrated “Extended Bite Me Edition”, but it’s only 96 seconds longer. ^