‘What We Do In the Shadows’: Vampire comedy hits the sweet spot

BY PATRICK Z. McGAVIN | FOR THE SUN-TIMES

The New Zealand-made art comedy “What We Do in the Shadows” is a bracing reminder of how the right burst of energy and style breathes fresh ideas into a genre threatened with creative exhaustion.

From its opening image of a hand emerging from a coffin to shut off an alarm clock to the lyrical way its characters levitate or transform into bats, this droll and very funny movie is distinguished by its sharp comic timing, inventive production design and visual wit.

Jermaine Clement and Taika Waititi, of the cult HBO show “Flight of the Conchords,” wrote and directed the movie. This marks the sharpest expression of their offbeat and playful sensibility. Utilizing the form of “This is Spinal Tap,” they riff on the existential and comic despair the ancient undead experience navigating the strangeness of modern life.

The filmmaking is so fluid and seamless, the movie’s conceit of a documentary crew following a group of vampires living together in a shambling house in contemporary Wellington never feels self-conscious. Just the opposite, Clement and Waititi weave in some very striking visual effects, particularly archival and painting photography, to help sketch out the characters’ melancholy pasts.

The vampires are colorfully and ritualistically individualized. The leader, the 18th century Viago (Waititi), 379 years old, is desperate to assert his authority over his unruly mates, the suave 862-year-old libertine Vladislav (Clement) and the impudent Deacon (Jonathan Brugh). The wild card is 8,000-year old Petyr (Ben Fransham), a spectral and frightening presence.

Their lair is a labyrinth of the macabre and decrepit. The humor runs the gamut from the absurd to the tasteless. Otherwise it is observant and deadpan and given flair by the judicious timing. The dominant tension derives from the newly altered eternal state of Nick (Cori Gonzalez-Macuer) and his decidedly human best friend, Stu (Stu Rutherford), a computer software analyst whose dry line readings are a wonder.

“What We Do in the Shadows” deliberately withholds from the poetic or the terrifying and locates the humor and pathos in the ordinary, like Viago’s disgust at blood-stained dishes untended for five years or the vampires’ recurring difficulty of finding suitable clothes. The result is messy and often wildly unpredictable.

It’s never a parody, but rather a slice of life, or more accurately, the neck. More often than not, it hits the sweet spot.

[s3r star=3/4]

Paladin presents a film written and directed by Jermaine Clement and Taika Waititi. Running time: 86 minutes. No MPAA rating. Opens Friday at Music Box Theatre.