Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi, Jonathan Brugh, Cori Gonzalez-Macuer, Stuart Rutherford, Ben Fransham, Jackie van Beek, Elena Stejko, Jason Hoyte, Karen O’Leary, Mike Minogue, Brad Harding, Rhys Darby.
The Mockumentary is one that really divides opinion. There are those that adore the thought of being able to see the ordinary person on the street satirised and lampooned and there are those that find it the lowest form of cerebral wit; however, satire is only truly funny when the foot is being kicked upwards, when it starts kicking downwards that’s when cruelty is allowed to fester and the undeserving get left behind. Satire is at its best when it is aimed at the aloof and genuinely disturbing.
When satire itself gets sent up and spoofed, that’s a whole new ball game. Jonathan Swift, a master satirist who suggested in the pamphlet A Modest Proposal that the Irish of the time be allowed to have as many children as they wanted to stave off starvation, a huge damning indictment of the education, political and religious grounds in which a brave people found themselves fighting against, would arguably have seen the sense in taking satire to task in the elegantly written and surprisingly brilliant New Zealand comedy What We Do In The Shadows.
Written by and starring Jemaine Clement and Taike Waititi, What We Do In The Shadows creeps upon you like a bat losing its innate sonar ability and getting tangled up in your hair, it might be scary but there is something quite thrilling about it happening that you relish later on. The film never lets go of its bite, it latches onto something dark and fiendishly clever and in the end you wonder how you ever lived without the characters in your life.
With four vampires of differing ages living under one roof, a gang of werewolves looking for distraction, a hierarchy of ghouls, the undead, and the urban population of Wellington, New Zealand all out to snack on life’s bare bones, the ubiquitous television camera crew find much to film in the horrors of the night.
The illusion is set, the audience gratefully hypnotised by the ongoing lives of Vladislav, Viago, Deacon, Petyr and new comer and the result is a film in which just keeps giving. Every anarchic symbolism used to get to the point of ripping the beating slithery heart of false satire out, every conceivable joke wrapped in a potent cunning bite, the creative heart of Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi flowing like an opened artery.
Satire is meant to educate as well as take risks and What We Do In The Shadows comes out of a dark place and introduces some much needed light to the proceedings. Too many satirists forget their true target but for anyone who took part in this production, satire hit the bullseye every time.
Ian D. Hall