Video Mondays: What We Do in the Shadows (2014): A Mildly Bloody Good Time

I was familiar with “What We Do in the Shadows” (movie) and then the TV/streaming series, but for some reason never watched either one until it was the mockumentary choice of my meetup group. The premise of the movie is that a documentary camera crew follows around members of a secret society in current day New Zealand for several months before a special event, The Unholy Masquerade. The “secret society” members are four vampires who are flat-mates living in Wellington. Being a comedy they are all kind of inept at what they do and the main tension of the story seems to be whether they will be discovered by the humans living around them. But the humans they interact with appear to be just as inept, so life (or death) goes on.

I had to do a google search to recall what other movies were released in 2014 to help get in the headspace of when this movie was released (and why I didn’t bother seeing it back then). Other movies that were released in 2014 and some of the movies I saw in the theaters were “Wild,” “ex machina,” “Interstellar,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “Boyhood,” “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies,” and the “Theory of Everything.” I imagine that it might have had a very short theater run and possibly didn’t even make a theater release in my area… A quick check with Wikipedia and they list a limited release February 13th in 2015 and regional release in March of 2015, and one of the videos I watched ended with a “In Cinemas 21st November. “ So, I have no idea when I could have seen it in theaters. I just know that apparently it didn’t make the cut and I never bothered looking for a download/streaming option (although Wikipedia lists that it was heavily pirated circa November 2015).

I’m big fan of mockumentaries like “This is Spinal Tap” and “District 9” and TV series like “The Office.” Watching this film in 2025, the talking to the camera thing feels a bit dated and the pace is really slow, like there’s no real story here except the day-to-day annoyances of being a vampire living in Wellington, NZ. I mean, how often do they have to eat (humans) and I don’t know that Wellington is such a huge area that the neighbors wouldn’t eventually notice people either disappearing or changes in behavior (like becoming completely nocturnal or no longer eating in restaurants)? I know, it’s a comedy, played for fun, but I guess it was slow enough that my mind went there.

While the pacing and story are a tad weak, I enjoyed the humor and was impressed that It looks like all of the special effects were done “in camera” and made good use of their limited budget. A brief encounter with a pack of werewolves was surprisingly well done. There’s an interesting dynamic between the vampires and between them and their human familiars and the old trope of whether you can trust a vampire to keep its word. In the end it was a mildly bloody good time. I really should check out the TV series. Enjoy.

[Movie viewed from Amazon Prime (rent) on 2025-02-14]