"Say hello to the night, Lost in the shadows, Say hello to the night, Lost in the loneliness."

Rating: 9/10 (2 November 2017)

Whilst sadly getting no Trick or Treaters,I started looking for a Horror movie to watch to mark Halloween. Reading praise for the title from a number of IMDbers over the years,I was pleased to see the BBC screening the movie,which led to me finding out what they do in the shadows.
The plot:
Preparing to attend the yearly masquerade ball of witches,vampires and zombies, vampires Viago, Vladislav, Deacon, and Petyr and the 8,000 year old Count Orlok allow a documentary crew to come in and film them over the lead-up to the ball. Letting the film crew shoot all their daily routines, Deacon gets his human servant Jackie to bring two random in for them to feed on.Draining the woman, the gang chase after the man,but are stopped in their tracks,when Orlok appears,and appears to have the man all for himself. The next night, Viago, Petyr, Vladislav and Deacon discover that instead of killing him,Orlok has turned the man into a new member of the gang.
View on the film:
Put together from 125 hours edited down to 90 minutes (!) the outline co-writers/co-directors/co-stars Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi works incredibly well,thanks to the (largely improvised) gags being based around the building of the friendship between all of the vampires and the fall-out from their trip to the masquerade ball. Basing each vampire off specific vamps from famous films,Clement and Waititi bring out superb character comedy in the awkward differences each vamp shares,from the classical romantic Viago,to the modern day pretty boy Nick.
Bringing the life of the vamps to a light in a Found Footage format,the directors do occasionally break the rule of the genre with unnatural camera positions,but make up for it by the dashing tracking shots stabbing the flick with an urgency of each punch-line being caught in the moment. Keeping the budget low,Clement and Waititi cleverly use CGI effects sparingly in order to sink their fangs into the relationships,with smoothly handled CGI transformations matching the transformations taking place within the gang. Entering as outsiders, Stu Rutherford (who was originally hired to work on the CGI!) and Cori Gonzalez-Macuer give great dead- pan performances as Stu and Nick,whilst Waititi and Vladislav hilariously layer on the Gothic flamboyance as Vladislav and Viago,who get lost in the shadows.