Between Only Lovers Left Alive, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and now Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement's What We Do in the Shadows, the vampire genre, having been slowly drained of vitality throughout the past decade and seemingly staked once and for all by the Twilight series, seems to have risen from the dead (along with some long ass titles.)
However, unlike its brothers in arms (or fangs, teehee), What We Do in the Shadows thrives on the fact that the genre has been done to death - a fact that should appeal to hardcore horror fans. What We Do in the Shadows, a Christopher Guest meets The Real World mockumentary about a group of vampires sharing a flat in Wellington, New Zealand, realizes just how exhausted the genre is and doesn't feel the need to spice things up with sparkles or synthetic blood or parasitic worms or some other insane twist. There's no reinvention here. It's all back to basics. An affectionate spoof of the entire vampire mythology that works not only as a terrific comedy, but as a pretty great vampire movie too.
It's easy to see what the film is doing and what notes it's hitting - there's Viago (Waititi), the rich dandy vampire ala Interview with the Vampire, there's Vladislav (Clement), a sex-obsessed Romanian warrior type ala Vlad the Impaler/Bram Stoker's Dracula, and the 8000 year old Petyr (Ben Fransham), a Count Orlok lookalike ala Nosferatu, among others. But unlike the lazy, unfunny vampire parodies of recent memory, What We Do in the Shadows is not simply doing reference jokes. It's abundantly clear that Waititi and Clement have immense love and respect for horror and the vampire genre and are simply getting back to all the things they love about it.
What is truly brilliant about What We Do in the Shadows is how it juxtaposes the extraordinary with the mundane. Here you have these centuries old beings of immense supernatural power who have flat meetings, a chore wheel, and complain about how one of them hasn't done the bloody dishes in five years. There's so much to love here and so much comedic gold gets mined out of simply placing these lavish, extravagant bloodsuckers in a boring, run-down, nowhere part of town. What they're doing is nefarious, but it's also pretty monotonous.
What We Do in the Shadows is funny from beginning to end. But what's also so amazing about it is just how layered it is. It's jokes are lighthearted and charming on the surface, but they stick with you. The characters are silly caricatures, but they're also deeply compelling and richly complex the more you think about them. And then there's what may be the film's greatest strength, it's lore, which intermingles centuries upon centuries of vampire history (and decades upon decade of vampire movies) in a way that feels unique, creating jokes organically out of this intermingling rather than at its expense.
It's doesn't hurt that the casting is completely inspired, using a plethora of insanely talented actors to create a world and mythos that feels natural and lived in. Besides the four main flat-mates, there's the recently turned Nick (Cori Gonzalez-Macuer), a scuzzy, frat-boy type who goes around parading his newly minted vampire status and brooding about his inability to eat french fries anymore; there's Jackie (Jackie Van Beek), one of the vampires' worn-down, hilariously mistreated familiar who spends her time finding victims and performing menial chores in the hopes of being turned; and there's Anton (Rhys Darby), who heads a rival pack of werewolves and is obsessed with appearances above all else. Just casting the terrifically pale and timid Darby as the pack's alpha male is funny enough, but his constant reminder to his pack that "We're werewolves, not swearwolves" is easily one of the funniest recurring gags I've seen in quite some time.
Many people will probably criticize What We Do in the Shadows for not having more bite than it does (figuratively speaking). However, it is the film's uncompromising geniality (even during the most intense and heartbreaking scenes)that makes it so wonderful. Waitiki's undeniable sweetness and the film's deadpan nature (reminiscent of the pair's work on Flight of the Conchords) is what anchors the film. And their love for the genre makes What We Do in the Shadows infinitely rewatchable, with characters, jokes, and scenes worth revisiting again and again to see how they grow and to try and spot all of the tiny, hilarious details you might have missed.
8 out of 10
