Accomplished vampire mockumentary

Rating: 7/10 (23 December 2015)

Version I saw: Grimm Up North festival screening
Actors: 6/10
Plot/script: 7/10
Photography/visual style: 7/10
Music/score: 7/10
Overall: 7/10
Peter Jackson started two strings of Kiwi film: huge blockbusters, usually starring Americans, and micro-budget films, especially comedy or horror or both. What We Do In the Shadows, directed by Jemaine Clement (of Flight of the Conchords fame) and Taika Waititi, is one of the latter.
I am a fan of Flight of the Conchords, the musical comedy duo, so it is fortunate from my perspective that the emphasis is very much on comedy rather than horror. Taking extraordinary things and putting them in a mundane context is a standard comedic method, and mockumentary is a style that harks right back to This Is Spinal Tap, so there is precedent here.
Possibly too much precedent: some jokes I found to have been done before in other vampire comedies such as Dracula: Dead and Loving It and the more humorous parts of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Still, there was plenty of originality to keep me entertained. Clement & Waititi's last film together, Eagle Vs. Shark, was a bit too 'quirky' for my taste, but What We Do had more than enough to laugh at as far as I am concerned.
Each of the 5 central vampires gets their own sub-plot, which is wrapped up comfortably in a display of admirable screen writing balance, and there are some special effects tricks that are even more impressive for the way they slip by practically unnoticed. The downbeat nature of the film, deriving comedy from stripping away the atmosphere and style to expose the ridiculousness underlying it, is very much in Jemaine Clement's wheel-house, and he even gets a bit of musical fun in, although it is a far cry from Flight of the Conchords' witty parodies and catchy tunes.
All in all, I laughed out loud plenty of times, and what more can you ask of a comedy?