Released last year, What We Do In The Shadows is a comedy which imagines what would happen if a reality show crew decided to follow a group of four vampires around and see how they live (they share an apartment) and interact with their environment.

Cleverly, these four vampires run the gamut of movie vampire tropes, from a Nosferatu-like ghoul to a Vlad the Impaler to a Anne Rice-ian dandy to a “newer” Twilight-like Vampire.  This later vampire, though the youngest of the group (at first), is nonetheless 100+ years old and imagines himself a good looking “bad boy”…though he amusingly clearly isn’t.  Later on we have -MILD SPOILERS!- a really new vampire appear, and I suspect that one was based on (perhaps) The Lost Boys.

While the movie starts rather slowly, it features a solid, well conceived plot that builds a healthy backstory and cast to our main vampires and subsequently leads to a nice, even sweet, climax/resolution that ties all the various threads into a nice bun.

For obvious reasons, I won’t get into specific details here!

On the minus side, the film is a “slow burn”.  It takes a bit to get to know the characters and what they’re about and, therefore, for the audience to start caring for the story presented.  While the pace didn’t bother me to the point of where I wanted to shut the whole thing off, I can imagine there are less patient people out there who will.  Too bad for them because the film does deliver some hearty laughs.

I could go on but I don’t want to get into more spoilery material.  Suffice to say if you like your humor subtle as well as in your face and enjoy comedies that explore decidedly odd directions, you will enjoy What We Do In The Shadows.