What We Do In The Shadows (2014) Review

During a recent movie night we all agreed that the films would be Shaun of the Dead and Deathgasm as everyone bar me and the missus had not seen Deathgasm. After watching it someone recommended What we do in the Shadows, it looked decent on the trailer so what better than a bit of humour to finish what had turned into a horror comedy night. I’d heard of this film but not seen it before and I love a mockumentary style movie especially if it’s funny and horror based.

Directors: Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi

Writers: Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi

Stars: Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi, Cori Gonzalez-Macuer

Run Time: 86 minutes

There’s not much plot to explain really the film is a mockumentary where a film crew have been given permission along with protection from being killed to film the daily lives of four vampires, who all live in a house together in Wellington New Zealand. There’s Viago who the film starts off showing us wandering around the house waking up the other vampires.

Viago, Deacon and Vladislav are all typical vampires you’d expect dressed in older clothes and then there’s Petyr who is 8000 years old and looks like Nosferatu. The first three like to venture into town and bring people back to kill and drain.

One day they end up with a newly turned vampire on their hands Nick, he has a friend that despite being human everyone seems to bond really well with his name is Stu and he’s a totally boring looking normal human who helps the three vampires adapt to new technology in the world.

The film has a great humourous tone throughout as they go about their lives, we meet a familiar that one vampire uses as a cleaning slave and to get them easy victims. All the myths are touched upon in clever and amusing ways from invisibility, sunlight, not being able to eat, flying pretty much everything you can think of.

The Good

• Stu.
• The trouble new vampires have with flying
• The way it covers all the myths and lore about vampire life.
• Petyr.
• We’re werewolves not swearwolves.
• There’s a great scene when the police come round to investigate the vampires house.
• What happens when a vampire eats chips.
• The effects are great, sure there’s not a great deal of them but the ones in there all look decent.
• Unholy Masquerade is brilliantly done where we get to meet some of the other undead creatures.

The Bad

• Does I didn’t want it to end count? This is one of those rare films where although it’s not perfect there’s no bad points that immediately spring to mind and to find them you’d have to be incredibly picky.

I consider this one of the best horror comedies I’ve seen for a long time, for me this subgenre is a bit like the found footage one has been in the past, over saturated with average to poor films. Comedy horrors are hard because if the comedy element isn’t right you end up with an unfunny crappy horror film.

This however nails the humour, adds in the odd bit of gore here and there combined with the funny characters that it successfully brings to life so to speak it’s a must watch. A beautiful, fun film that will certainly get at least a second watch from me. Everyone should go out of their way to watch this and to makes things even easier it’s on Netflix!

Overall Rating -9/10