Film Review: Mockumentary // What We Do In The Shadows

Fig 1: Poster

What we do in the shadows is a Mockumentary style comedy documentary directed by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi. The film has a camera crew follow vampire housemates Viago, Vladislav, Deacon, Petyr who are clearly not apart of this century with their dated clothes and vampiric accents and having them get up to speed with current culture as vampires is where the majority of the side splitting comedy stems from. The Documentary style of storytelling is nonfictional but as a mockumnetary parodies the documentary style of story telling, What we do in the shadows cleverly and wittily combines the mockumentary style by following along the lives of the vampires and all the debauchery that ensues.  


The juxtaposition between vampires trying to live their lives and performing mundane tasks while also having special vampiric abilities is hilarious as they have to call for house meetings as Deacon hasn't done the dishes for five years even though he is an extremely young vampire at two hundred years old. When they get into argument out of nowhere they take flight and hiss at each other like feral cats and as vampires are not aloud into any building that they are not invited into, watching them try to get into nightclubs on a night out on the town is comedy at its best. "What We Do in the Shadows is so smart and perceptive about the quotidian ups and downs of its protagonists’ lives that it’s almost a jolt when, say, they start levitating off the ground or get into a passive-aggressive argument with a pack of werewolves" (Duralde A 2015)

Fig 2

The writers and producers of What we do in the shadows are extremely skilled to pull anything this silly off and so well and in doing so the film grossed over $6.9 million with a budget of $1.6 million. The film works on so many levels by challenging the documentary genre by showing the real and hilarious lives of these fictitious vampires parodying the documentary genre and superabundant Vampire themes and showing that What we do in the Shadows is a true example of the mockumentary genre done right.   





Bibliography 

Duralde, A., Banks, A., Gilman, G. and Otterson, J. (2015). 'What We Do in the Shadows' Review: Horror-Comedy Breathes Life Into Vampire Movies and Mockumentaries. [online] TheWrap. Available at: https://www.thewrap.com/what-we-do-in-the-shadows-review-jemaine-clement-taika-waititi-rhys-darby/ 
[Accessed 15 Dec. 2017].

Illustration List

"Fig 1: Poster"(2015). [image] Available at: http://ew.com/article/2015/05/18/what-we-do-in-the-shadows-short-exclusive/ 
[Accessed 15 Dec. 2017].


"Fig 2:" (2015). [image] Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/what-we-do-in-the-shadows-lampoons-the-undead-lifestyle/2015/02/18/09beb3d4-b2f8-11e4-854b-a38d13486ba1_story.html?utm_term=.887734f5a317 
[Accessed 15 Dec. 2017].

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