What We Do In The Shadows: What if vampires were just ... arseholes?

What We Do In The Shadows - if nothing else, it at least give you something you can do to annoy all the Twilight fans you shouldn’t even have in your life in the first place. Tell them to go check it out; that it gives a real sense of what it means to be a vampire in an uncaring age; hell say whatever you have to in order to make them go; they’re never going to speak to you again so it’s worth the time it takes. It would be like that time I got two overly cineaste former friends to rent Pamela Anderson’s Barb Wire on the premise that it was a remake of Casablanca. Former friends. Maybe I should have held back. Though, in fairness, it totally IS a remake of Casablanca. With strippers. In your heart you know that Rick’s Café Americain would have had strippers in real life.

Does it serve a purpose other than annoying Twilight fans? Probably, yes, if you’re a fan of the comedy of awkwardness and mockumentaries in general, which it turns out I’m not (when I watched The Office almost ten years ago, it was in a near constant state of cringe that I might actually BE David Brent; people’s reactions to me saying that since then have been more amusing than I actually found The Office). What We Do In The Shadows is one of those movies where people are trying to be funny by playing people who don’t know that they’re complete idiots, and my problem is that even when that’s superbly well done, a) it’s not actually funny and b) my real life consists of dealing with people who don’t know they’re complete idiots.

Does it pass the Bechdel test? For the third time this evening, no. Maybe nothing does. 

How does it handle classical issues of vampirism?

Well, vampires don’t reflect in mirrors, but they can be photographed and filmed by video cameras. 

Could Wellington, New Zealand, population 400,000 support the dozen vampires and eight werewolves which we see in the course of the film without anyone noticing the steady erosion of the citizenry? Hard to say, though having the world’s stupidest police force would almost certainly make discovery less likely.

Are vampires sexy and irresistible? See post title.

Does never getting old mean never growing up? See post title.

Why do vampires prefer virgin blood? Best joke in the movie, actually.