What We Do in the Shadows
Dir: Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi
2014
*****
What We Do in the Shadows is based on a short film that Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi made in 2006. It is a fly on the wall fake-documentary about four vampires who live together in a house in Wellington. There is Viago 379, a Dandy from the 1600's, Vladislav 862, a Medieval butcher nick-named Vlad the poker (as he liked to use hot pokers on his victims), Deacon 183, a young rebel who became a Nazi vampire during the second world war and Petyr, a 8000 year old blood-sucker who resembles Max Schreck's Count Orlok. It is somewhere between The Office and Spinal Tap but with Vampires and much better. I haven't chuckled throughout an entire film for quite some time. Clement and Waititi know their Vampires, spoofing the genre has been done many times before but never as well. The subtlety in the performances is brilliant and the improvised extensions of the script are never milked or overcooked. I have never seen a film that is as consistently funny, every new scene bringing something more inventive and more hilarious than the next. It is a rare example of the fake-documentary style actually working and it puts many of the big budget found-footage films to shame. There is less than 10 seconds worth of CGI in the whole film, the bulk of the effects being performed with old-school techniques and looking all the more glorious because of it. The best scene of the film for me has to be when the Vampires and Werewolves square up to each other, with the sensible head of the Werewolf group struggling to control his pack but delivering some of the best lines of the movie ("Mind your language fellas, remember, we're Werewolves not Swearwolves!", "Remember to take off the clothes you want to keep before you transform"). It's an ageless comedy that is so silly that it will appeal to one's childlike/mischievous side but it's also so clever, that should hopefully up the ante within the sub-genre, both in comedy and horror. Easily one of the best films of 2014.