Harefooted Halloween: What We Do in the Shadows

What I Liked: The dry wit.  It’s totally my kinda humor but, like any comedy it’s definitely not for everyone.  I love how they turn all the day to day stuff that a vampire would have to deal with into something that’s mundane.  A vampire is really fantastical.  So for these guys to be so casual about their powers and habits, more often than not, it comes off as pretty funny.

This was done in a documentary style like The Office or some shit which I personally don’t mind.  But I was surprised and happy to see that there was a nice conscious effort to bring the characters and events together which forms a more cohesive movie.  Like the werewolf characters aren’t just throwaways that you encounter only once.  They pop up several times and affect the narrative along with other plot devices.

What I Didn’t Like: I wished they used the 8,000 year old vampire Petyr more.  He’s a good grouchy bear kinda character that they should’ve gotten more mileage out of.  As I understand it he was expensive to film because of the extensive makeup job (which looks fucking phenomenal by the way) so they had limited time to shoot that particular character.  Well at least the filmmakers realized it was good to have someone like that in the movie, even if it was brief.

Overall Impression: I liked this a bunch.  It’s got awesome production design with all of the old tattered costumes, the cool makeup and filthy set decoration.  I even thought the special effects looked good most of the time with the vampires transforming into bats and flying and all that.  This is a smarter movie than it lets on.  It feels pretty tight and totally gels which is impressive considering most of the dialogue was improvised. 

Vampires get made fun of a lot in movies but this has to be one of the funniest I’ve seen.