Yank my credentials and call me a hack, but I thought Vampires Suck was really funny. Even though it had received a pathetic 0% Rotten Tomatoes ranking when I wrote this review, I think it’s worth the price of admission alone just to see newcomer Jenn Proske mimic Kristen Stewart. Girlfriend has her down.

Which is pretty amazing, considering Proske is rumored to have just arrived in Los Angeles last October, and this is her first role in a feature film. She does have acting chops, however, honed at the Boston University School of Theater, where she probably picked up the ability to all but become Kristen Stewart, with every pout, twitch, squint, head tilt, shrug, etc. perfected. Their overwrought angst is one and the same. Also Gossip Girl’s Chris Riggi, as werewolf Jacob White, actually out-Taylors Mr. Lautner, with more defined abs and more canine appeal.

So most of the film was hastily stapled together by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, of the Scary Movie franchise. Yes, it’s that same kind of broad humor, an in-your-face parody which knows not the definition of the word “subtly.” But, especially when they’re doing a send-up of something that really annoys you, blatancy is not necessarily a bad thing. Lets face it: The Twilight series is almost a parody of itself, yet it’s fans and makers take it deadly serious—that’s the annoying part.

I do wish there were more nods to other popular vampire franchises, however. True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to name a few, deserved more than paltry random mentions. But this film has no pretensions of perfection. It simply aims for bloody good fun, and for me, it hit the jugular.

Rated PG-13

—Lisa Johnson Mandell