What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
Directed by Jemaine Clement
Vampire housemates try to cope with the complexities of modern life and show a newly turned hipster some of the perks of being undead.
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The genial Viago (Waititi), a 17th-century dandy, affects the frilly shirts and jewelry of the Hammer horror movies; Vladislav (Clement), a 12th-century hypnotist and impaler, favors the swarthy pop-star look of Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker's Dracula ; Petyr (Ben Fransham), apparently even older, is a mirror image of the rodentlike bloodsucker in Nosferatu ; and Deacon (Jonathan Brugh), the baby at 183, is the "bad boy" of the group, Viago explains in his ongoing narration to the camera.
While individual gags and cineliterate nods (from Nosferatu to Blade ) may have comical bite, there’s not enough meat to sink its feature-length fangs into.
And they do it while paying reverent tribute to the great vampire movies of the past, from Fransham’s Petyr being a deadringer for the iconic fiend from the classic “Nosferatu,” to Waititi’s fastidious Viago (He implores his messy roomies to please stop getting blood all over his antique couch.)
Airing more on the side of comedy, Clement and Waititi poke fun at numerous vampire generations in the same movie, from Nosferatu to Twilight, and they do so through a Big Brother-esque documentary that introduces audiences to a group of vampires just trying to survive in today’s crazy, monster-hating world.
Which is exactly how What We Do in the Shadows operates; scuttling between genres, sucking in references from Nosferatu to Twilight, and spraying out comedic lifeblood by way of a banal, acerbic perspective, and fully-realised characters.
Jonathan Brugh’s Deacon nods to the bad-boy bloodsuckers of The Lost Boys, while Ben Fransham’s Petyr – bald, ghastly white and with a mouth full of crooked fangs – is a genuinely unsettling evocation of the great Nosferatu.
The genial Viago (Waititi), a 17th-century dandy, affects the frilly shirts and jewelry of the Hammer horror movies; Vladislav (Clement), a 12th-century hypnotist and impaler, favors the swarthy pop-star look of Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker's Dracula ; Petyr (Ben Fransham), apparently even older, is a mirror image of the rodentlike bloodsucker in Nosferatu ; and Deacon (Jonathan Brugh), the baby at 183, is the "bad boy" of the group, Viago explains in his ongoing narration to the camera.
Clement plays Vladislav, an oversexed vampire in the Bram Stoker’s Dracula vein whose demonic mojo hasn’t been the same since a traumatic encounter with a figure known only as “The Beast.”
There are nods to The Lost Boys and Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, among others, plus some set pieces that are simply genius: not least the scene where the housemates, getting ready for a night out, are unable to see their own reflections and have to rely on each other’s drawings.
Cross Bram Stoker's Dracula with the Britcom The Office, and you get What We Do in the Shadows, a brilliantly funny new vampire-themed mockumentary out of New Zealand.
- while the script cunningly plays with your expectations (as well as referencing The Lost Boys).
Jonathan Brugh’s Deacon nods to the bad-boy bloodsuckers of The Lost Boys, while Ben Fransham’s Petyr – bald, ghastly white and with a mouth full of crooked fangs – is a genuinely unsettling evocation of the great Nosferatu.
There are nods to The Lost Boys and Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, among others, plus some set pieces that are simply genius: not least the scene where the housemates, getting ready for a night out, are unable to see their own reflections and have to rely on each other’s drawings.
By embracing a parodic self-fashioning based on films like Blade, Nosferatu , The Lost Boys, and Twilight, these vampires reveal how mainstream cinema's cultural hegemony need not be an instrument of aesthetic oppression, but can instead be one of productive self-creation.
A parody's effectiveness depends heavily on the knowledge of its subject, and the reach of directors/writers/performers Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement proves to be gratifyingly deep and wide, riffing on lore that runs the gamut from Vlad the Impaler woodcuts to sparkly Twilight pretty boys, and seemingly everything in between—one running gag will have fans of The Lost Boys plotzing.
He has history as an undead Nazi and now takes pleasure in ordering around his human servant (Jackie van Beek) and pranking people with tricks he picked up from The Lost Boys.
Tomando como pretexto a tres antiguos vampiros que intentan sobrevivir a la vida moderna en Nueva Zelanda, los realizadores reflexionan sobre el verdadero peso del personaje en la cultura popular, inspirándose en trabajos como Drácula: muerto pero feliz (Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Mel Brooks, 1995) o La sombra del vampiro (Shadow of the Vampire, E. Elias Merhige, 2000).
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Not for the serious or staid, What We do in the Shadows is in the vein of Christopher Guest and the mockumentaries A Mighty Wind and Best in Show (OK, you pick your favorite.)
What We Do in the Shadows is also one of the better mockumentaries to be released in a long time, Waititi and Clement showing considerable skill with the limited format, proving themselves in league with the likes of Christopher Guest (A Mighty Wind, This is Spinal Tap).
This latter strategy is a tricky business that goes wrong more often than right, as you may know if you've ever seen Love at First Bite (1979) or Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995) or Dark Shadows (2012).
Jemaine Clement, best known as half of the New Zealand musical comedy duo Flight of the Conchords , keeps the film more in the vein of This Is Spinal Tap, with set dressings borrowed from last year’s Only Lovers Left Alive.
Practically an absurdist comic response to last year's Jim Jarmusch-directed vampire reverie Only Lovers Left Alive (which was already pretty funny in its own right), Shadows is one macabre, amusingly farcical mockumentary.
Though conceived simultaneously, What We Did in the Shadows seems to take place in a similar world to that occupied by the characters in Jim Jarmusch’s touching Only Lovers Left Alive.
In last year’s superlative and melancholy “Only Lovers Left Alive,” director Jim Jarmusch gives us world-weary vampires burdened with the wisdom of living through countless centuries of hanging out with the world’s most talented artists, thinkers and writers.
Viago’s storyline lends some of the same sense of romantic exhaustion that defined Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive , a superior vampire film from last year.
(Did you see "Only Lovers Left Alive"?) Viago (Waititi) in particular is the gentlest heart, wanting to ensure humans have an enjoyable night before being sucked dry/murdered.
Films such as 1955's Rebel Without a Cause and 1967's The Graduate painted both the kids and the parents in such dissimilar terms that one group might as well have been aliens from another galaxy, futilely trying to communicate with the other species and failing miserably.
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Films such as 1955's Rebel Without a Cause and 1967's The Graduate painted both the kids and the parents in such dissimilar terms that one group might as well have been aliens from another galaxy, futilely trying to communicate with the other species and failing miserably.
(Jackson, whose Forgotten Silver stands as an earlier Kiwi mockumentary highlight, gets a special shoutout in the credits.)