This is the true story (true story!) of four vampires, picked to live in a house, who have agreed to have their lives taped to see what happens when creatures of the night stop being polite, and start getting real.
What We Do in the Shadows is home to the scariest scene I’ve come across so far in this young Halloween season. A man is trying to hastily exit a house occupied by a handful of vampires, and he finds himself in a nightmarish version of those Looney Toons chase scenes where every turn or opened door is inexplicably met by the antagonists. It is shot with a twisted funhouse aesthetic, with minimal cuts, which ensures that you feel every terrifying jump as you ride along over the shoulder of the intended victim. It’s kind of a technical marvel, but more importantly it’s one of those rare but beautiful horror movie moments that you have to laugh at, literally giddy with fright.
Make no mistake, the film, featuring ace Kiwi comic actors (Jermaine Clement, Rhys Darby), leans heavily to the comedy side of the comedy-horror divide. The aforementioned scene illustrates, however, just how lovingly reverent the filmmakers manage to be to the source material. They are taking inspiration from vampire movie lore, not just lampooning it. In other words, this is much more Shaun of the Dead than Scary Movie. The film is positioned as a slice-of-life documentary about four vampires sharing a flat in New Zealand. There is the 8,000-year-old Petyr (an obvious Nosferatu stand-in), the 800-year-old Vladislav (an obvious Dracula stand-in), and two younger vampires (with no obvious reference that I could spot). Before long, they have added a fresh recruit to their ranks, and the film follows the five of them as they quibble over each other’s housekeeping habits, hit the town in search of good times and fresh blood, and have remarkably innocuous interactions with each other, their familiars, a roving pack of werewolves, and their lone human friend. The filmmakers play up the group’s tensions and the ennui of their nightly routines, relegating the fantastical elements of the story to the background: blood-sucking, murder, immolation via sunlight… the stuff that other vampire movies focus on. This inversion is the key to the film’s humor, emphasizing the trivial stuff as the real story, while the very obviously dramatic is treated with a perfect deadpan.
I loved this movie. If you find joy in things like Flight of the Concords or Christopher Guest mockumentaries, I highly recommend you check it out. It will be good at any time of the year, but there is enough Halloween spirit in there to make it especially gratifying in October.
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