{"id":24735,"date":"2019-06-25T14:00:43","date_gmt":"2019-06-25T19:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=24735"},"modified":"2019-06-25T10:05:33","modified_gmt":"2019-06-25T15:05:33","slug":"countdown-to-halloween-what-we-laugh-at-in-the-shadows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2019\/06\/25\/countdown-to-halloween-what-we-laugh-at-in-the-shadows\/","title":{"rendered":"Countdown to Halloween: What We Laugh At in the Shadows"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I promised in the waning sentences of the last article that we\u2019d be focusing on an atypical \u201chorror film\u201d this week. I also promised that it\u2019d be a sort of satire on one of the genre\u2019s longest-running staples. So, without further adieu, I\u2019d like to talk to you all about the comedic brilliance of \u201cWhat We Do in the Shadows<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film itself is rather new, releasing in 2014 at the Sundance Film Festival and in New Zealand, the filmmakers and stars Taika Waititi<\/a> and Jemaine Clement\u2019s<\/a>, native homeland. It has since spawned a TV show<\/a> that premiered this past spring on FX.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The movie itself kind of slipped under the radar despite the somewhat cult status of the duos\u2019 previous work. Jemaine Clement has starred, provided his voice and had various bit parts in several movies and TV shows over the course of his career. But he is most famous for being one part of the comedy duo \u201cFlight of the Conchords<\/a>,\u201d which spawned a TV show<\/a> that ran on HBO for two seasons back in the early aughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Musical comedy duo Flight of the Concords onstage in 2018. (Raph_PH \/ Flickr)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Waititi got his start directing several episodes of the aforementioned show and wrote and directed the cult film \u201cEagle vs Shark<\/a>,\u201d which starred Clement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you haven\u2019t seen it, I cannot recommend it enough. It\u2019s basically a New Zealand \u201cNapoleon Dynamite\u201d but WAY funnier and filled with a hell of a lot more emotion. I dare you not to love the two main characters by the film\u2019s end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waititi has since directed one of the best films in the entire MCU, and definitely the best Thor film, in \u201cThor: Ragnarok.\u201d He also provided the voice for fan-favorite character Korg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat We Do in the Shadows\u201d  on its surface sounds like a terrible, terrible idea. A mockumentary on vampires living in New Zealand. It should be rife with cringe-worthy jokes and satire so stale it makes Mel Brooks\u2019 \u201cDracula: Dead and Loving it\u201d look revolutionary (nothing against the genius of Mel Brooks as we\u2019ll eventually get to one of his films, which is, in my opinion, one of the greatest comedies of all-time, but many of his later films lacked some of the brilliance of his early work).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film itself takes on one of the oldest bastions of the horror genre: the vampire. Bram Stoker\u2019s \u201cDracula,\u201d the book that inserted the vampire mythos into the Western world\u2019s consciousness debuted just a hundred years after the first \u201chorror\u201d novel. And though it wasn\u2019t the first book about vampires, it certainly is the most popular, and still among one of the first and most influential stories within the genre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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