Clever vampire parody

Rating: 7/10 (13 September 2015)

Ever wonder how vampires always manage to look so spiffy and dapper in their appearance and attire even though they can't see themselves in a mirror? This and many similarly pressing ghoul-related questions are addressed in "What We Do in the Shadows," a macabre mockumentary about four roommates (Ben Fransham, Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi, Jonathan Brugh), sharing a home in New Zealand, who just happen to be bloodsucking creatures-of-the-night. Eventually, they're joined by Nick (Cori-Gonzalez Maceur), an unsuspecting victim who comes over for "dinner" one night, then pals around with them after his transformation, and Stu (Stu Rutherford), Nick's human friend whose genuine likability keeps the foursome from turning him into one of them.
Written and directed by Clement and Waititi, "What We Do in the Shadows" is a fitfully amusing parody of all the conceits and tropes of a genre that has become a mainstay of popular culture in recent years - and that's putting it mildly. Some of those works have even been satirical in nature, but "Shadows" ups the ante by setting its spoofery in the context of one of those slice-of-life documentaries so dear to the hearts of reality-TV aficionados everywhere.
Like "The Addams Family" and "The Munsters," "Shadows" derives much of its humor from the domestication of our own bogeymen and fears, as well as the incongruity of a bunch of centuries-old (in one case, millenia-old) undead creatures living and relating in the modern world. Yet, while the humor is decidedly dark in nature - there is no stinting on graphic bloodletting being performed on innocent victims - it's also very clever, even though the movie does hit a point of diminishing returns after awhile, perhaps inevitably, given its somewhat self-restricting one-joke premise.
Ultimately, though, it's an original and fun celebration of male camaraderie and bonding - even in its most outlandish form.