Our Movie Review: What We Do in the Shadows (2015)

Why we watched it: Fans of Flight of the Conchords

Our rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Her review: I am nearly ashamed to admit that I didn’t know about this movie and call myself a Flight of the Conchords fan. Shame on me. But in the same week, I saw this movie start to show up on Best Of lists and have it recommended to me by a friend.  As a fan of the vampire genre as well, I put this on the Netflix queue and waited for it to arrive.

There are a lot of things going for this movie: the first being that it actually aces and mocks the Fake Documentary genre (which is starting to get old, no lie), right down to the New Zealand Documentary symbol at the beginning (I started giggling there, I will admit).  Additionally, there’s a lightness to the performances that makes this really enjoyable and keeps it moving along. Finally, add to the whole mix good make up and really clever camera tricks and straight-forward special effects and you have my 4.5 stars.

Just the premise: three (well, four) vampires rooming together in Wellington is already funny. Then add in the various characters: vampires of various ages with various backgrounds. What made this film a real winner for me was the utter mundane lives of these vampires is just the right touch, mocking the Twilight trend (as well as name-checking Lost Boys, a movie held fondly in my adolescent memory). These vampires can’t even go clubbing because they can’t get invited into a club. The chore wheel isn’t moving and don’t get them started on exes.

Apparently there is a sequel already planned, concentrating on the werewolves (not swearwolves!) (because there aren’t just vampires in Wellington of course, but werewolves and zombies as well). I’m not sure the kind of magic of this little film can work again, but this was a lot of fun.

His Review: This is one of those movies where my dislike of the genre keeps me from really appreciating the film. I don’t particularly find vampires interesting, so I just can’t get into films about them, even films that are mocking them as soundly as this film does. Even as humor, the bloody biting scenes were just not funny to me.

But aside from those, this mockumentary has a fun time with showing these dark and dangerous creatures as ordinary and rather inept. I do really like the low key, dry humor of this film. Surprising for Flight of the Conchord fans, Jermaine Clement’s Vlad the Impaler vampire takes a back seat to Taika Waititi, who is excellent as the dandy vampire Viago. The Nosferatu vampire in the basement is funny and scary at the same time, a nice trick.

There is a story behind all the vignettes, that holds the movie together and keeps it from become just a series of skits. While my heart wasn’t completely in this one, it did make me laugh and in retrospect is one of the better comedies I’ve seen in a while.