Once bitten, twice shy.
The world needs another vampire movie like it needs another hole in the neck. You can’t swing a crucifix without hitting another psycho sexual reanimation of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.”
The genre is overflowing with parody as well – Bela Lugosi reprised Dracula in “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” Eddie Murphy in “Vampire in Brooklyn,” Leslie Nielsen in “Dracula: Dead and Loving It,” George Hamilton in “Love at First Bite” and Johnny Depp in “Dark Shadows.” And were the Addams family vampires? Or just weird?
So “What We Do In the Shadows,” the New Zealand comedy by, and with, one of the co-creators of “Flight of the Conchords” treads well-trampled ground with a heavy foot. It’s not unfunny but it does make you wonder WWMPD (What Would Monty Python Do?).
This variation of shows with posthumous characters like “Being Human,” “IZombie” and “Forever” portrays four flatmates who also happen to be vampires, and vice versa.
One of them is 8,000 years old and looks like Nosferatu. The others, who are merely several hundred years old, include a Vlad impostor played by Jermaine Clements of “Conchords,” a primitive slob (“vampires don’t do dishes!”) played by Taika Waititi and a fop played by Jonathan Brugh, who asks his roomies to put newspapers down if they are going to kill someone in the house.
They also have a “pre-deceased” friend – a software analyst – played by Stuart Rutherford. Their activities are being chronicled by a documentary crew wearing crucifixes, a mockumentary conceit reinforced by a title card that credits funding from the New Zealand Documentary Board.
The clueless and rumpled bunch wake up at 6 p.m. and head out to find victims. But they can’t see what they’re wearing in the mirror when they dress and can’t enter nightclubs until they are invited in, which they never are. They end up bickering among themselves (“Get up and stand on the ceiling like a man!); feuding with a rival gang of werewolves that has rules about profanity, (“We’re werewolves, not swear-wolves”), led by Rhys Darby, the manager on “Concord”; and watching the sunrise on YouTube.
While random and repetitious “What We Do In the Shadows,” is also charmingly ridiculous, a shaggy dog story with goofy character chemistry and low fi effects.
That’s the funny thing with films about the undead community – people are dying to make them.
Two and one half stars **1/2
With Jermaine Clement, Taika Waititi, Jonathan Brugh, Cori Gonzalez-Macuer, Stuart Rutherford, Ben Fransham, Rhys Darby, Jackie van Beek, Elena Stejko. Produced by Emanual Michael, Chelsea Winstanley, Taika Waititi. Written and directed by Jermaine Clement, Taika Waititi. Rated PG-13 (language, violence). Approximate running time: 86 minutes.
Tags: Flight of the Conchords, Jermaine Clement, undead, vampires, What We Do In the Shadows Posted by