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.
The shaggy aimlessness inherent to improvised buddy comedy is jarringly stitched to the gloomy Gothic weight of the cinematography and production design, to excellent effect.
I'm so sick of vampires I'd have pounded a stake into my own heart not to have to watch this, but it turns out to be a pitch-perfect spoof of MTV's The Real World and a sly satire on millennial slackerdom.
Shadows takes what could have been a one-joke sketch and turns it into a very funny, and occasionally even touching, take on brotherhood and friendship...It's certainly more authentic and realistic than recent seasons of The Real World.
The Film Stage
June 21, 2016
What We Do in the Shadows is proof that the vampire genre is alive and well as long as it's in the right hands.