Vibe
A documentary crew follows vampire roommates Viago, Vladislav, Deacon, and Petyr as they negotiate chores, nightlife, feeding, immortality, fashion, and interpersonal resentment in contemporary Wellington while preparing for an annual supernatural social event. Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi use deadpan documentary interviews, handheld observation, practical gore, improvisational rhythm, and banal roommate problems to make centuries-old vampire mythology collide with ordinary modern life. Watch how characters use direct-to-camera interviews to justify behavior the observational footage has just shown to be selfish, ridiculous, or dangerous; documentary form creates the joke structure.
Watch for
- Compare interview testimony with observational footage; characters routinely explain themselves more generously than the camera does.
- Notice how ancient vampire rules collide with modern logistics such as clubs, clothing, photography, and household chores.
- Watch practical blood and effects played with documentary casualness rather than horror-movie emphasis.
- Track Nick’s arrival as a disruption to the household’s social ecology, not just an excuse to explain vampire rules.
Production notes
BFI Player lists What We Do in the Shadows as a 2014 comedy-horror from New Zealand, running 86 minutes and directed by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement. The mockumentary format lets production scale stay intimate: houses, clubs, streets, practical blood effects, performance improvisation, and documentary camera behavior become enough to support an entire supernatural community.
Trivia
- BFI Player lists the film at 86 minutes.
- Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi co-directed.
- The film is a New Zealand production.
- The central vampires share a house in Wellington.
- The film later expanded into a television franchise built from the same mockumentary-monster premise.
Legacy
What We Do in the Shadows became a major modern vampire comedy and expanded into a broader television franchise while preserving the central idea of supernatural creatures dealing with mundane social systems. Its success also strengthened Waititi and Clement's international profiles and demonstrated that mockumentary form could refresh monster mythology without abandoning affection for the genre.