What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

I was looking for a perfect movie to review on the first day of the year and it turned out that I've already reviewed all the New Year's Eve movies out there. Or at least the most popular. So I decided to watch something completely different, and I went with Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi's What We Do in the Shadows, a mockumentary horror comedy. And let me say, what a hell of a way to start the new year! 

The film, or rather a documentary crew, follows the everyday life of Viago (Taika Waititi), Deacon (Jonathan Brugh), and Vladislav (Jemaine Clement), three vampire flatmates in Wellington, New Zealand, who struggle with the most mundane things in life like paying rent, keeping up with the chore wheel, overcoming flatmate conflicts, and getting into nightclubs, the latter being quite a serious issue since they need to be invited in order to get in.

The plot is very thin, more like non-existent, actually, as the majority of the film is improvised. The lack of a plot is not an issue with What We Do in the Shadows at all though; in fact, while there’s no story, there is a lot going on, most of it being pretty odd and kind of awkward situations the characters find themselves into whose main purpose is to showcase the disadvantages of being a vampire, and it makes it for quite a journey, a very entertaining and hilarious one.

The characters are wonderfully written. They all are very likeable, funny and serious at the same time, and their introductions are very amusing as they provide to each of the main characters a backstory and help to establish their distinctive personalities. They are quite eccentric and not so realistic characters —they are vampires, after all— and yet we see them as real people, we identify with them and we care about them. Even the supporting characters are lovable, specifically Stu (Stu Rutherford), a human friend with the vampires. 

Madman Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, The Orchard

Clement and Waititi's great writing would be pretty useless if there wasn't a great cast to match it, and What We Do in the Shadows has a wonderful cast that does the script more than justice. Every single actor gives an excellent performance —their deadpan delivery is always on point and so is their timing, and they make the characters believable.

The humour is absolutely brilliant too as it is macabre, unique and genuinely hilarious. The jokes and punchlines always work, and the fighting, whether it's between flying vampires, bates or vampires and werewolves, is hilarious.