What We Do in the Shadows
From 2014, What We Do in the Shadows, a "mockumentary" from New Zealand, shows the nightly lives of four vampires sharing a house in Wellington. Captions at the beginning inform the viewer that the camera crew wore crosses throughout filming and were granted protection by the vampires.
The film itself was directed by Taika Waititi (also directed Thor: Ragnarok) and Jemaine Clement. Waititi plays Viago, Clement plays Vladislav, a vampire based loosely on the fifteenth century nobleman, Vlad the Impaler. Jonny Brugh plays Deacon, the "young" hell raising vampire among the group. At 8,000 years, Petyr (Ben Fransham) is the oldest, looks like Nosferatu, says very little and due to his appearance never goes out on the town as the others do.
The film deals a lot with petty disputes among the flatmates. No one does the dishes; Deacon is lax in doing household chores. The basement floor around Petyr's stone box where he sleeps upright during the day is littered with body parts, including an intact human spine.
The vampires go out regularly to entice people to their house, where they attempt to trap them and drain them of blood. One such victim, Nick (Cori Gonzalez-Macuer) gets bitten and turned into a vampire by Petyr. Deacon resents and dislikes Nick, clashing with him often. They all find Nick's tendency to brag to Wellington citizens about his new vampiric condition very annoying; it later becomes a serious problem when Nick tells a vampire hunter he's a vampire. The hunter finds their house, breaks in at sunrise and fights Petyr, who burns to ash in the deadly sunlight.
Still, Nick's friend Stu (Stu Rutherford) is well liked by the group. Stu's ability with computers introduces the vampires to a new world. He fixes their television set. Nick's friendship with Stu, doubtless, helps Nick survive his grievous error in telling a vampire hunter such sensitive information.
The group has encounters with a pack of lycanthropes, just ordinary-seeming guys who do the usual thing at full moon time, becoming enormous werewolves--in one scene killing one of the documentary's crew. The werewolves turn Stu, too, but Stu's friendliness with the vampires helps the two supernatural sets of beings get along, at least long enough for them all to party together.
A written description of this film doesn't do justice to the wit and inventiveness in each scene. It never falls flat. When they turn into bats it seems natural, since we've seen this kind of thing so many times in classic vampire movies. Vampire film motifs are all turned into humor. Viago holds a cup before a mirror and says, "Look, a floating cup!" They rely on each other to judge appearances before going out since they can't study their reflections. Their levitations mingle their aggressions with how funny they look doing it.
I got the impression that Wellington, New Zealand, is an interesting place with a lively arts community, since it provides the foundation from which such an archly satirical film emerged.
Vic Neptune
From 2014, What We Do in the Shadows, a "mockumentary" from New Zealand, shows the nightly lives of four vampires sharing a house in Wellington. Captions at the beginning inform the viewer that the camera crew wore crosses throughout filming and were granted protection by the vampires.
The film itself was directed by Taika Waititi (also directed Thor: Ragnarok) and Jemaine Clement. Waititi plays Viago, Clement plays Vladislav, a vampire based loosely on the fifteenth century nobleman, Vlad the Impaler. Jonny Brugh plays Deacon, the "young" hell raising vampire among the group. At 8,000 years, Petyr (Ben Fransham) is the oldest, looks like Nosferatu, says very little and due to his appearance never goes out on the town as the others do.
The film deals a lot with petty disputes among the flatmates. No one does the dishes; Deacon is lax in doing household chores. The basement floor around Petyr's stone box where he sleeps upright during the day is littered with body parts, including an intact human spine.
The vampires go out regularly to entice people to their house, where they attempt to trap them and drain them of blood. One such victim, Nick (Cori Gonzalez-Macuer) gets bitten and turned into a vampire by Petyr. Deacon resents and dislikes Nick, clashing with him often. They all find Nick's tendency to brag to Wellington citizens about his new vampiric condition very annoying; it later becomes a serious problem when Nick tells a vampire hunter he's a vampire. The hunter finds their house, breaks in at sunrise and fights Petyr, who burns to ash in the deadly sunlight.
Still, Nick's friend Stu (Stu Rutherford) is well liked by the group. Stu's ability with computers introduces the vampires to a new world. He fixes their television set. Nick's friendship with Stu, doubtless, helps Nick survive his grievous error in telling a vampire hunter such sensitive information.
The group has encounters with a pack of lycanthropes, just ordinary-seeming guys who do the usual thing at full moon time, becoming enormous werewolves--in one scene killing one of the documentary's crew. The werewolves turn Stu, too, but Stu's friendliness with the vampires helps the two supernatural sets of beings get along, at least long enough for them all to party together.
A written description of this film doesn't do justice to the wit and inventiveness in each scene. It never falls flat. When they turn into bats it seems natural, since we've seen this kind of thing so many times in classic vampire movies. Vampire film motifs are all turned into humor. Viago holds a cup before a mirror and says, "Look, a floating cup!" They rely on each other to judge appearances before going out since they can't study their reflections. Their levitations mingle their aggressions with how funny they look doing it.
I got the impression that Wellington, New Zealand, is an interesting place with a lively arts community, since it provides the foundation from which such an archly satirical film emerged.
Vic Neptune
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