Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi have worked together extensively before, on the HBO series Flight of the Conchords, so if you’ve seen that show and responded well to its comic sensibilities, chances are you’re going to love this new mockumentary they’ve co-wrote and co-directed for the big screen, What We Do in the Shadows. Why the spooky and mysterious title? Because this faux-documentary is giving us a look into the lives of a group of four vampires who live together in a rundown, spooky old house in New Zealand. In traditional mockumentary fashion, this movie isn’t about the horrors of being a nocturnal, blood-sucking fiend, however, it’s more about how hilariously neurotic and self-absorbed people can get, and how amusing it is when you get a group of narcissists all living in a house together. It would seem that not even eternal life can do much to instill maturity in some people.
The main thing that a movie like this has to accomplish is being funny, and What We Do in the Shadows is. The laughs are big and they come consistently. There’s more going on in here than just the setup and delivery of gags though. Even though our protagonists are all vampires, they’re also all completely unique characters who feel like they’ve been fully thought through and fleshed out by the actors who portray them. Clement, Waititi, and Jonathan Brugh play the main three we spend time with, and you get the sense that they each love their characters so much that they could talk at length about their histories, the origins of their individual quirks and styles, and the ins and outs of how they relate to each other in different combinations. The jokes in here are great, but the most memorable thing about this movie is the personalities it puts on display.
Clement and Waititi also manage to tell a pretty effective story by the time the end credits roll. A group dynamic is established, an outside element is introduced to that dynamic that puts it into a period of crisis, and then by the time things get resolved everyone feels like they’ve experienced a good deal of growth and change. Or, at least, as much growth as man-babies like these guys are capable of. When What We Do in the Shadows starts off, it feels like it’s going to be a one-note vehicle for nihilist joke delivery, but it develops far beyond that and actually ends up becoming a fairly heart-warming and mature story about the nature of friendship and family in the end. Coming from a movie about ludicrously dressed adult men doing sexy dances in their living room, pulling pranks from The Lost Boys, and puking gallons and gallons of blood in a back alley after a night of heavy partying, that’s a pretty nice surprise.
