It’s a shame that more people won’t see What We Do in the Shadows, because not only is it very, very funny, but it’s also unexpectedly (perhaps accidentally) poignant. It’s a novel concept that both celebrates and satirizes our current cultural obsession with the supernatural, and it’s 100% fun to watch the entire time.
Shadows is filmed mockumentary style, and follows four vampires who live together in New Zealand as they await the Unholy Masquerade, an annual celebration of all things ghoulish and frightening. There’s Vladislav (Jemaine Clement), basically a walking parody of Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker’s Dracula; Viago (Taiki Waititi, who co-wrote and -directed with Clement), a sometimes effeminate fop; Deacon (Jonathan Brugh), a send-up of “sexy bad boy” vampires like True Blood‘s Erik Northman; and Petyr (Ben Fransham), who looks like Nosferatu and has no lines but makes up for it by being one of the best source of Shadows‘ sight gags. All the old vampire tropes are here; the foursome is repelled at the sight of crucifixes, can’t stand sunlight, Deacon has a human slave named Jackie (Jackie van Beek, excellent), and so on. The film also pokes fun at the vampire mythos, as Deacon opines “I think we just drink virgin blood because it sounds cool.” Vladislav adds: “When you’re going to eat a sandwich, it’d be nice if no one had fucked it.”
The premise is solid, and the jokes land way more often than they don’t (and the visual effects are pretty damn good too). The problem is in the execution, insofar as the Unholy Masquerade proves to be a weak framing device that the film abandons almost immediately, picking it up again about a half hour near the end. Shadows goes off on tangents involving a new vampire named Nick (Cori Gonzalez-Macuer), who can’t stop telling people he’s undead. Nick brings his human friend Stu (Stuart Rutherford) to meet his new vampire friends, and in one of the film’s best running gags, they all immediately take a shine to Stu over Nick, despite Stu acting like a completely normal dude the whole time. There’s also a group of weirdly polite werewolves led by Anton (the always welcome Rhys Darby). Overall the film is funny as hell but also unfocused as hell, as if Clement and Waititi just wanted to jam in as many jokes as they could. Which I’m okay with, because like I said above, the jokes work 99% of the time.
I know I mentioned some unexpected poignancy. There’s a note of wistfulness and nostalgia to What We Do in the Shadows, and of the pain of growing old. These vampires are constantly growing old but staying young, and they have to say goodbye to the simple pleasure in life like French fries or sunrises (there’s a great scene of Deacon watching sunrises on YouTube. Beautiful shot). You have to watch all your friends and loved ones die, whether by increasingly implausible methods (“Making the simple mistake of fashioning a mask out of crackers and attacking some ducks”) or by simple old age. As Deacon points out, old age is brutal too.
I’m recommending What We Do in the Shadows pretty unreservedly. Clement, as half of Flight of the Concords, has proven himself to be a unique comedic voice, and he and Waititi make for a good writing team. Whether or not the film makes you think like it did me, it will definitely make you laugh.
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