Back in 2010, director Craig Moss entered the parody genre with The 41-Year-Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It. It was pretty darned awful, so why did I decide to screen his genre follow-up, 2013’s 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Because I’m a masochist, I guess.

Aaron and Dana Galen (Flip Schultz and Kathryn Fiore) move into a new house with teen daughter Liz (Olivia Alexander) and infant son Jonah. Actually, it’s not a totally new home, as Dana grew up there. Soon after their arrival, they encounter supernatural forces and install cameras to document the activities.

From there we learn of Dana’s past, as her father (French Stewart) killed the cast of The Artist there during a satanic ritual. We follow their path as they try to deal with the spirits and recover their normal lives.

While 41-Year-Old Virgin went down the Apatow path, 30 Nights seeks to capture the “found footage” Paranormal Activity vibe. I think horror flicks can be tough to spoof because they so often veer into self-parody; each franchise goes through so many sequels that they become ridiculous enough on their own.

Like most modern parodiess, 30 Nights sticks with broad mockery, though I’ll give it a little credit: unlike the series of Movie movies such as Date Movie and Epic Movie, this one doesn’t usually simply regurgitate scenes from other films. That’s the Movie MO: they reproduce a sequence from a popular flick with only a minor change, like Hannibal Lecter will say a famous line and then fart.

This means that although 30 Nights includes gobs of allusions to other films, it doesn’t just copy them verbatim. This ensures that 30 Nights comes across as a little more thoughtful and challenging than the “Movie” movies.

But just a little, as it loves another genre staple: smut humor. Nearly every gag found here revolves around sexual areas or scatological elements. Blow jobs, hand jobs, anal sex, bestiality, urine, vomit, feces – eliminate those components and only about 15 percent of the movie’s gags would remain.

And if you cut out gratuitous pop culture references, we’re down to about one percent of the flick’s humor. When I call these “gratuitous”, I really mean it; outside of the film’s focus on the Paranormal Activity vein, virtually all of the allusions come out of nowhere and have nothing to do with the plot. Moss throws them out for cheap recognition value. Is there any reason to have the teen daughter look like “the girl with the dragon tattoo” or her paramour to be Abe Lincoln? None whatsoever in terms of story.

The lack of comedic inventiveness makes 30 Nights a tedious drag. The cast occasionally redeems it; for instance, Jen Kober is almost funny as a gender-ambiguous contractor. Unfortunately, the greatest comedians in history couldn’t do much with such awful material. This is lowest-common-denominator junk.

30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo appears in an aspect ratio of approximately 1.85:1 on this single-sided, double-layered DVD; the image has been enhanced for 16X9 televisions. The transfer looked quite good for SD-DVD.

Colors came across well, as the movie offered nicely delineated hues when appropriate. The use of “found footage” brought a lot of blue tint, and those elements worked fine. Blacks seemed dark and full, while shadows were reasonably smooth. Some interiors came across as a bit dense, but those instances weren’t problematic.

Sharpness seemed fine. A few slight examples of softness cropped up through the film, but these were minor. Overall definition looked solid. I noticed no shimmering or jaggies, and edge enhancement was minor. No source flaws marred the presentation. Given the restrictions of SD-DVD, this was an appealing presentation.

I thought the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack of 30 Nights was fairly positive as well. As a comedy, the mix didn’t have a ton of ambition, but the horror elements occasionally allowed it to open up a bit more than usual; those scenes added a bit of activity in the side/rear channels. Don’t expect tons from those areas, though, as this usually remained a pretty standard comedy mix with an emphasis on ambience and music.

Audio seemed fine. Speech was concise and distinctive, without edginess or other concerns. Music came across as rich and full, while effects showed good clarity and accuracy. While nothing here stood out as memorable, this became a “B-“ soundtrack.

A featurette called Behind the Scenes of 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo runs eight minutes, six seconds and includes comments from writer/director Craig Moss, and actors Kathryn Fiore, Flip Schultz, Olivia Alexander, Ben Morrison, Arturo Del Puerto, and French Stewart. The show looks at story/character areas, cast and performances, and Moss’s influence on the production. This is a puff piece with little information on display.

The disc opens with ads for The League Season 3, The Do-Deca-Pentathalon and Wrong Turn 5. These also appear under Sneak Peek along with promos for The Watch and 10 Years. No trailer for 30 Nights shows up here.

I went into 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with very low expectations, and it lived down to them. Despite a few talented actors who work overtime to sell the material, the film’s consistent focus on cheap, easy, uncreative humor makes it a chore to watch. The DVD provides pretty good picture and audio but lacks substantial bonus materials. This isn’t the worst parody I’ve seen, but it’s still pretty awful.