What We Do In The Shadows

(Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi/2014/New Zealand)

Vampires are gas craic altogether, especially when they hang out together and house share. Witness the evidence in this documentary following four vamps of various ages living in a dingy house in Wellington, New Zealand. There’s three young bucks Deacon, Viago and Vlad who are really cool, dude, and then there’s 8000 year old Petyr in the basement, a proper old school vampire who is really the coolest. Like any house share there are disputes about cleaning up, vampire protocol and who should be vampirised. New recruit Nick upsets the apple cart a bit but his mate Stu is fecking rad man so the gang gets a new sense of camaraderie. When Stu gets attacked by werewolves and turns into one of them the vamp gang is traumatised but ultimately it leads to a new peace between the usually antagonistic vampires and werewolves. There are some laugh out loud moments and the overall cadence of the film is bang on, happy go lucky new kids on the block vibes but the conceit of the documentary stretches a smidgeon thin towards the end and some of the gags go by a little flatly. Minor gripes though as it is a well spent, funny 90 minutes.

(3/5)

Trollhunter

(Andre Ovredal/2010/Norway)

A superb mockumentary using found footage about covert operations in Norway’s woodlands attempting to keep trolls away from the hoi polloi and to also control their population. It builds from innocent naivety to complicit partaking in the troll hunting like a mash up of Blair Witch and Man Bites Dog, it is a worthy successor of the style of both those movies. It’s also wonderfully droll, depicting official mismanagement and bureaucratic negligence as all the while the hunter complains of his lot. All the fairy tale tropes are there, 3 goats on a bridge, trolls turned to stone, smelling Christian blood etc but it lifts itself out of parody with the subtext of state sponsored censorship and secrecy being imperative to keep the status quo and all funded by the unknowing public. Hugely funny and deftly executed with all parts acted impeccably, this is a favourite of mine.

(4/5)