This is what happens when you're a vampire.
'Twas unseasonably warm in Indiana today, so naturally I chose to spend part of my afternoon indoors watching a mockumentary about vampires. One might be inclined to think the vampire comedy is a well that has been tapped dry over the years, but Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi's What We Do in the Shadows handily demonstrates that there are still some laughs to be wrung out of it -- and big ones, too. Even as it takes the piss out of these creatures of the night, though, one thing it never does is lose sight of the fact that they're bloodthirsty monsters.
In addition to writing and directing the film, Clement and Waititi also star as half of a quartet of mismatched bloodsuckers sharing a flat in Wellington that has given full access to a camera crew from the New Zealand Documentary Board. Waititi is the 379-year-old Viago, an 18th century dandy whose primary concern is making sure people adhere to the chore wheel, while Clement is the 862-year-old Vladislav, a rather more laid-back fellow once known to his foes as Vladislav the Poker. Their counterparts are the 185-year-old Deacon (Jonathan Brugh), who takes the role of the petulant upstart, and the Nosferatu-like Petyr (Ben Fransham), who has a few thousand years on the others, which means he doesn't get out much. (It's not like he could walk the streets without drawing attention anyway.)
The more time we spend with these walking corpses, the more we learn about their attachments to the outside world. For example, Deacon has been stringing along his familiar Jackie (Jackie van Beek) for years, and Viago is still pining for his lost love, who actually got away some decades earlier and is currently living in a retirement home. Vladislav, meanwhile, has his arch-nemesis, dubbed "The Beast," who really did a number on him at some indeterminate time in the past. As for the present, much of it involves mentoring newly minted vampire Nick (Cori Gonzalez-Macuer), whose human friend Stu (Stuart Rutherford) is more popular with his undead pals than he is. In addition, there are the preparations for The Unholy Masquerade, the social event of the year in vampire circles (to which witches and zombies are also invited), an unwelcome visit from a vampire hunter, and multiple run-ins with a pack of werewolves whose alpha Anton (Rhys Darby) has to work to keep them in line. In light of how funny their scenes are, should Clement and Waititi follow through on the potential spinoff they've talked up in at least one interview, I would be behind that one hundred percent.