What We Do in the Shadows (2014) #reviews

A documentary team films the lives of a group of vampires for a few months. The vampires share a house in Wellington, New Zealand. Turns out vampires have their own domestic problems too.

It’s not often that I’ll laugh until my sides hurt, but directors Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi pushed all the right buttons for me with their mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows – and I dig vampires, as some of you may already know. I can compare this to The League of Gentlemen meets the vampire genre as we get to know Viago, Vladislav, Deacon, and Petyr, who cohabit in the prerequisite crumbling domicile in the midst of a Wellington suburb in New Zealand. Add their minion (and mum) Jackie to the mix (who clearly has ambitions to be undead) whose work includes procuring and disposing of suitable victims on the off-chance that they'll turn her. (Hint, they're far too comfortable with the status quo.)

Of course their idyll isn’t long-lived, and when one of the vampires accidentally creates a new (modern) vampire, the pecking order is thrown out of kilter, with side-splittingly hilarious consequences. (And of course there are many laughs at the Tweelighters’ expense.)

Okay, the gags are really silly, but if you know your tropes, you’ll end up with a belly ache, like I did. Especially when the werewolves entered stage right… Honestly, I don’t know when last I’d seen a film that was just so much fun (thank you, Netflix). And yeah, this is one I’ll watch again some time in the future. Considering how stolid and unwieldy most of the mainstream cinema fare is nowadays (especially from the US), this is a waft of bloody good (and gory) fun.

There’s not much else to say, other than the fact that the characters were incredibly well put together, and the humour is spot on. So many cringe-worthy awkward, and irreverent situations, but oh so worth it.