Fans of the New Zealand comedy””folk””duo””turned””HBO””show “Flight of the Conchords” will be entirely at home with these vampires from various centuries living in modern day New Zealand. These vampires are just like us: they love partying (at night, of course), eating meals with friends, messing with their rivals and dealing with past lovers.
Like everything I’ve seen from New Zealand, “What We Do in the Shadows” is entirely done in a dry, sarcastic way. The characters think they’re amazing and awesome while being such losers. This mockumentary film follows various guys who live in a flat: Vlad, Viago, Deacon and Petyr. Jemaine Clements, from “Flight of the Conchords,” actually co-created this movie and plays Vlad (or Vladislav). Rhys Darby, the band manager, even shows up for a few minutes as the hilarious leader of werewolves who the vampires love antagonizing.
This movie answers tons of questions about vampires that most people didn’t even realize they wanted to know, like how they dress up when themselves if they can’t see their reflections. How do beings from the 14th century adapt to technology? Or, really, how badly would they adapt to it?
One of the main characters in the film is Stu, the best mate of one of the vampires. Stu is just this normal, non-vampire guy who everyone instantly likes and they make this pact to not eat him. He is an I.T. guy so he teaches them how to use phones, computers and even shows them a video of the sunrise. This particular character is even funnier when I found out that Stu, the actor’s real name, was actually flatmates (using New Zealand lingo here) with Taika Waititi “”the other creator””and Waititi asked Stu to come to the film everyday to help with I.T. He’d show up everyday and asked what needed to be done. Then, they started filming him reacting to everyone else.
Seeing different creatures around town might be some of my favorite scenes since we see various vampires trying to catch their meals at night. There is this gala at the end where creatures of various kinds like zombies are all hanging out together.
The movie is quite raunchy and inappropriate so it was tough finding a PG-13 joke but there is this one specific one. Viago talks about their outfits, “Yeah some of our clothes are from victims. You might bite someone and then, you think, “˜Oooh, those are some nice pants!'”
For those who are more Jacob than Edward, worry not: the creators recently said in an interview that there are plans to do another movie in the universe called “What We Do in the Moonlight” which features the werewolves””not swearwolves””in the movies. I am sure it’ll be hilarious, gory, sexual and, this time around, even hairier.
