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Jason Friedberg and Adam Seltzer have made their careers from slapping together spoofs that poorly parody everything from large scale adventures (Epic Movie) to world destruction (Disaster Movie) with obvious references and headlines torn from tabloids. But even a ubiquitous genre ripe for a thorough skewering is too much for the pair, whose latest lazy effort, Vampires Suck, is as shamefully unfunny as the rest.

Instead of their usual scattershot approach to pop culture, the duo only musters a lazy retread of the first two Twilight movies that somehow manages to be painfully worse.  Applying the same gloomy aesthetic and adolescent yearning (which they call “Hardwicke 101″), the spoof plods through the series’ familiar moments (drained of Twilight’s unintentional laughs), providing only over-explanation, bad impressions, and excessive pratfalls. Sketches typically start with the rocky romance of Becca (newcomer Jenn Proske) and Edward Sullen (Matt Lanter) before descending into slapstick violence, unable to maintain any satirical focus without resorting to a nut shot.

The witless Friedberg and Seltzer still randomly lean on their pop culture crutch, firing blanks at the Kardashians, “Jersey Shore,” Chris Brown and Lady Gaga for no other reason than cheap, forced laughs at the expense of easy targets.  Their latent homophobia, on full display in their bottom-feeding travesty Meet the Spartans, even resurfaces as the obvious joke about a pack of shirtless teens from two talentless hacks.

Their movie does not suck.  Think of it more as a swirling black hole of anti-comedy absorbing every stale joke about vampires you have seen and grown tired of over the last two years.  Lip biting sight gags and sparkling skin bits, already strip-mined by the likes of “Saturday Night Live,” FunnyorDie or College Humor, are repackaged with the kind of corny humor usually accompanied by rimshots or Jay Leno’s wagging chin. The only surprise this movie allows is there is not a character dedicated to shouting “Get it?” after every punchline.

Vampires Suck runs a mercifully forgettable 76 minutes, but why subject yourself to them?

.5 out of 5.

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