Vampires Suck

This topic contains:

• overall comments and recommendations
• details of classification and consumer advice lines for Vampires Suck
• a review of Vampires Suck completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 30 August 2010.

Overall comments and recommendations

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines. Other classification advice (OC) is provided where the Australian film classification is not available.

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

• a synopsis of the story
• themes
• use of violence
• material that may scare or disturb children
• product placement
• sexual references
• nudity and sexual activity
• use of substances
• coarse language
• the movie’s message

A synopsis of the story

Vampires Suck is a parody of the “Twilight” movie series. The film’s plot consists mainly of a patchwork of events taken from the first two films in the series Twilight and The Twilight saga: New Moon.

Becca Crane (Jenn Proske) moves back to the small Washington town of Spooks to live with her divorced father Frank Crane (Diedrich Bader). At her new school Becca is immediately attracted to, and forms a relationship with, the mysterious Edward Sullen (Matt Lanter), who along with his adopted family is a vampire. The plot thickens when a love triangle develops between Edward, Becca and Becca’s childhood friend Jacob White (Chris Riggi), a Native American who also happens to be a werewolf, and Becca’s life is threatened by a trio of rogue vampires.

The supernatural, vampires, werewolves, teenage relationships

Vampires Suck is full of highly exaggerated, gruesome violence, played for comedy Examples include:

• During the Saint Salvatore festival, a group of teenage girls attack Becca with shovels and planks of wood with one girl smashing Becca over the head with a long handled shovel, knocking her to the ground. An all-out fight erupts between those who are fans of Edward and the others who are fans of Jacob, with the girls hitting each other in the face and head with crude weapons such as shovels, pitch forks and planks of wood.
• In a fight between Becca’s father Frank and a man in a wheelchair Frank punches the man in the head and smashes the wheelchair over the man’s head. The man smashes Frank’s head against the pavement.
• Becca is bullied by other students at school with several students throwing cartons of milk over her back. One places a sign saying “kick me” on her back and a second student kicks her hard. A male student walks up to Becca, says “Hey new student!” and punches her in the face, knocking her to the ground. 
• Edward bites a woman’s throat and blood trickles from the wounds.
• Edward juggles a baby, a bowling ball and an apple. He lets the baby fall into a bag followed by the bowling ball; we hear a crunch but do not see the infant injured.
• A car nearly hits Becca, but Edward saves her by grabbing another student and pushing them in front of Becca. The car hits the student causing serious injury. Later we see the injured student wearing a neck brace and an upper body plaster cast.
• Becca’s father Frank asks her to demonstrate how she would protect herself using mace spray. She sprays mace into her father’s eyes causing him to collapse in pain with red and swollen eyes.
• Becca’s father asks her to kick him in the groin Becca hesitates but then kicks her father in the groin with her father collapsing on the ground.
• Frank asks Becca to rip his moustache from his face, Becca does it and we see a bloody skin-torn wound left where Frank’s moustache used to be.
• Edward chases a squirrel, catches it and brings it back in his mouth. We hear a crunch and see the squirrel dead and bleeding in Edward’s mouth. A short time later the squirrel reanimates as a vampire squirrel and attacks Edward.
• Edward hurls Becca into the air and she crashes through the ceiling of her bedroom and then several seconds later back through the roof of the house to land back in her bedroom.
• Becca cuts her finger on a piece of paper causing a gush of blood to fountain out of the wound. One of Edward’s vampire brothers unable to control his blood lust leaps at Becca with Edwards knocking Becca out of the way. Becca is thrown against a wall, breaking her arm. We see a bone poking through the flesh of her arm and blood gushing from the wound.  Becca pours this into a pyramid of champagne glasses from which Edward’s family drink.    
• Becca sprays mace into the face of another woman causing the woman to suffer; we see the woman’s red swollen eyes.
• Three vampires attack Becca and one of them bites her on the arm, leaving his fangs and entire set of teeth embedded in Becca’s forearm. Edward hits one of the vampires over the head with a baseball bat, ripping the vampire’s head from its shoulders and sending it flying through the air and smashing through a car’s back window. We see the severed head with some blood on the neck wound.
• Edward sucks poison from a vampire bite on Becca’s arm, then uses a crazy straw to suck the blood out of Becca’s arm.  Her arm shrivels as Edward sucks the blood out.
• Becca daydreams about repeatedly stabbing another girl in the chest.
• Four men attack a vampire, ripping his limbs and head from his torso.
• A woman hanging out of a moving car throws a champagne bottle at Becca and it smashes on Becca’s head. 
• Becca head-butts a man, knocking him to the ground.
• A group of girls (pro Jacob supporters) attack Edward with clubs. One of the girls hits Edward in the side of the head with a spiked club and the spikes remain embedded with blood trickling from the wound. Edward pulls the spiked club from the side of his head and appears OK.       

Material that may scare or disturb children

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children under the age of five, including the following:

• A large menacing vampire with a single very large fang in the front of his mouth.
• Pale-faced snarling vampires that display large sharp fangs
• A hamster skeleton in a cage on a running wheel.
• A high school student opens his backpack to reveal a number of labelled harvested human organs one of which is a beating bloody heart. 
• A man with his neck broken after being hit by a car has the jagged ends of broken bones starting to push through the skin of his neck. He has a broken arm with bones protruding through a bloody wound.
• A snarling, fanged-toothed, vampire squirrel that attacks Edward
• Jacob appears as part werewolf on several occasions sporting a mangy looking tail, pointy hairy ears and a flat hairy nose. On one occasion Jacob opens his shirt to reveal a very hairy stomach and ten nipples like a wolf.
• At a party, a vampire hands around a tray loaded with bloody human fingers with a bowl full of blood for dipping sauce.

Children in this age group are also likely to be disturbed by some of the above-mentioned scenes

Children in this age group are also likely to be disturbed by some of the above-mentioned scenes

Younger children in this age group may also be disturbed by some of the above-mentioned scenes.

Product placement

The following products are displayed or used in this movie:

• Electronic media such as mobile phones, Face Book and Twitter.
• Brand name products such as Cheetos, Tampax, Slurpee,
• Edward rides a Segway scooter.
• Numerous pop culture references and jokes made in relation to celebrities including: Taylor Swift, Jonas Brothers, Lindsay Lohan, Black Eyed Peas, George Clooney, Chris Brown, Tiger Woods and Lady Gaga.

Sexual references

Vampires Suck contains sexual references throughout. For example:

• Reference is made to a woman “doing” a pro golfer with a picture of Tiger Woods shown.
• While driving her home, Becca’s father looks at her breasts and says “Look at the size of those tits”.
• When Becca asks her father why there is a sex doll is in her bedroom, her father replies that he misses her mother. At one point while holding the rubber doll Frank tells Becca to say goodnight to her new mother.
• When Becca asks the man confined to a wheelchair how he is doing he becomes angry, making reference to not having any feeling below his waist specifically mentioning his penis.
• Reference is made several times to Becca being a virgin.
• Becca asks Jacob if he might like her gay little brother.
• A girl refers to being “a sperm in her dad’s balls”.
• Becca says that “The next time I see Edward I’m going to bone the shit out of him”.
• After kissing Becca, Edward laughs saying that he had never got to first base with a girl before.
• A teenage girl says “He did things to me no other guy had done before…I still can’t ride a bicycle”.     
• Becca tells Edward “I have raging teenage hormones and want to have sex with you.”
• Reference is made to having sex with a vampire as being the ultimate teenage girl fantasy.
• A girl who can foresee the future hands Becca a box of Tampax, and tells Becca that her period is coming early this month.

Nudity and sexual activity

Vampires Suck contains some nudity and sexual activity, including:

• Edward removes his clothes in front of a large crowd of people. His naked chest, abdomen, and hips are visible but the crowd blocks the view of his genitals and when the camera zooms in we see a large spinning disco ball covering the area.
• A teenage girl and boy wrap their legs and arms around each other and kiss passionately in the school canteen.
• Edward walks into the school cafeteria with a large bulge in the leg of his pants; a girl appears impressed.
• Edward lies on Becca’s bed with Becca straddling him. They kiss and Becca uses her mouth to remove a ring from Edward’s finger. When Becca opens her mouth the ring appears to have transformed into a tongue stud. Edward pushes Becca off and she says, “I like it rough.” Bella removes her gown to reveal black bikini pants and bra with flashing lights.  She says “I want to go all the way.”
• Several young men with bare chests and wearing shorts dance together suggestively, touching each other as they dance.

Use of substances

There is some use of substances in this movie, including:

• A man drinks from a wine bottle labelled “True Blood”.
• Blood trickles from Becca’s nose and Becca says that she shouldn’t have partied with Lindsay Lohan the night before.
• Becca’s father leaves her a note telling her “The weed is in the top draw.”  
• Several young men pour beer down a funnel into the mouth of another.
• A young woman talks about binge drinking as if it was the popular thing to do.

Coarse language

Vampires Suck contains coarse/crude language and putdown scattered throughout. Examples include:

• Holy shit; tits; douche bag; Jesus Christ; O my god; son of a bitch; father’s balls; hump; crap; you’re an arse-wipe girl; bone the shit out of; fuck me.  

In a nutshell

Vampires Suck is a parody of the Twilight movies from the writers/directors of Epic Movie, Date Movie and Meet the Spartans. It relies heavily on crude humour and sexual references rather than clever satire, and contains no real message. The word vampire in the title may attract teenagers, but it is not suitable for those under 15.

Parents of older children may wish to discuss the features of the Twilight movies parodied by this film and what it has to say about the genre.