‘What We Do In The Shadows’ review: Puts The Dead In Deadpan… and the fangs into y

“What We Do in the Shadows,” is a clever use of the mockumentary styled-format popularized by “The Office” that made that English comedy a bonafide hit around the world and also spawned an American copy. And the same applies to the 2014 film, directed by New Zealand co-directors/co-writers Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement when they released ‘What We Do In The Shadows,’ a hilarious, shambling-yet-unerringly-precise mockumentary about a group of vampires sharing a house in modern-day Wellington, New Zealand.

The two men also starred in the film, as a pair of odd-couple vampire roommates: the sweet-natured dandy Viago (Waititi), all pinky rings and ruffled shirts and concern about the upkeep of the house’s common areas, and the surly, less-sinister-than-he-thinks-he-is Vladislav (Clement).

Jonny Brugh and Ben Fransham played two other undead housemates, and the whole endeavor was driven by a commitment to spoofing both the documentary format (shaky camera, testimonials, the subjects’ hyper-awareness of their status as documentary subjects) and the ropiest tropes of vampire lore (the vamps go clubbing, only to grow increasingly frustrated when bouncer after bouncer neglects to expressly invite them in).

It was so over-the-top hilarious in a deadpan way, and what actually made the film more Kiwi-funny and seemed to resonate with the viewers, and a global fanbase ensued.

Now, fast-forwarding five years later, on American shores, the same concept film put into a 10-episode run and now set in a different land on another continent still manages to achieve the same amount of charm as the film originally inspired.

Taking place among a circle of vampires, the series (based on a New Zealand film of the same name directed by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi) applies a format whose secret weapon is to expose its subjects’ inherent delusions and dramas to a group of creatures straight out of Gothic horror. They come to seem like something both less and more than vampires — less glamorous, but closer, perhaps, to human.

ABOVE: Nandor (Kayvan Novak), Guillermo (Harvey Guillen) and Laszlo (Matt Berry) receive visitors in the FX series, What We Do In The Shadows.

If you are not a fan of the film or know who the creators (Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi) are?

Then where have you been hiding for the last five years?

The pilot episode’s opening minutes map neatly over the film’s: We meet the various players in much the same way. There’s the same “vampire house meeting” gag. And we’re introduced to Guillermo (Harvey Guillen), an all-too-human vampire’s assistant who, exactly like the film’s Jackie (Jackie van Beek), labors long and hard in hopes to one day be turned by his master.

Even their dark, appealingly shabby-hippie mansion strongly resembles that of the film, though instead of the Wellington suburbs, it’s located in the heart of New York City.

Well, Staten Island, anyway.

Soon enough, however, the series’ characters distinguish themselves, and the cast members establish their own rhythms. There is Nandor (Kayvan Novak), once a fierce, bloodthirsty warrior of the Ottoman Empire, who is now a vain, bumbling and quite literally bloodthirsty vampire who passively mistreats his sweet-faced human familiar (Guillen).

There is the couple: ostensibly handsome and charming Laszlo (The IT Crowd‘s Matt Berry) and the powerful Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) who, as the series opens, chafes against her role as de facto vampire matriarch — and develops a roving eye that alights upon, among other people, community college student Jenna (Beanie Feldstein).

“The problems of living with other vampires are the vampires I’ve chosen to stay with,” explains Nadja, one of the three creatures of the undead at the heart of FX’s new comedy series, What We Do in the Shadows.

They abide by most of the typical vampire rules: They must avoid the sun. They only drink (and eat) blood (lest they become violently ill). They have fangs, can turn into bats at will, and are able to cast spells on humans to get what they need (or make them forget certain events). But what makes the vampiric comedy so funny is the way the primary concern was its high-concept intermingling of ancient evil with contemporary mundanities, like the vampire housemates bickering over chore assignments.

And in the premiere, Nandor and his ‘familiar’ (a human who serves a vampire master), Guillermo (Harvey Guillen), visit the grocery store, while Laszlo runs afoul of touchscreen technology not built with the cold-blooded in mind.

 ABOVE: Natasia Demetriou and Matt Berry – ‘a tempest in a magnificently goateed teacup’ – in What We Do in the Shadows. Photograph: FX

And much time is devoted to the dysfunctional relationship between Nadja and Laszlo, who would probably have split several generations back were he not supernaturally bound to the woman who gave him that fateful bite. Nandor — much fussier and more formal than his size and homicidal pedigree would suggest — has no immortal spouse, but there’s a loopy codependence to his dynamic with Guillermo, who sticks around out of the hope that he’ll one day become a vampire, too.

Sweet-natured Guillermo wants nothing more than to join the ranks of the nightwalkers, but Nandor treats him like something halfway between an undervalued employee and a taken-for-granted spouse.

The show adheres to the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy of remakes, collecting a cast of ghouls mostly modeled to mimic the winning character dynamics of the film and letting them bounce off of one another, and it works to an utter delight.

The vampires spend their nights hunting and days sleeping until a surprise visit from an elder vampire throws their existence out of whack, and the series takes an arc-based structure from the arrival of an Orlockian creature (motion-capture chameleon and legendary actor, Doug Jones) and its mandate for the vampires to take over their home of Staten Island, there’s not much more to it all than hanging out with these characters.

Not that there needs to be.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

It’s also the purposeful awkwardness, a showy willingness to indulge a long pause or a furtive glance at the camera that pushes beyond naturalism into its own kind of theatricality that make the show tick.

The vampiric puns and gravity-defying slapstick go a long way, but attention must be paid to the resident humans, the still-beating heart of the show

And then there was the question of story. The 2014 film clocked in at a tight 86 minutes, which seemed just about perfect. The notion that its premise — however good, however solid — could benefit from getting stretched over the course of five hours seemed wildly unlikely, but at the same time and pleasantly pleasing the show works with all fangs and blood.

All in all, Culturedemandsgeeks are just glad to be part of this vampiric hidden world.

5/5 STARS