Documentary and Mockumentary | “What We Do in the Shadows“ (2014)

Fig. 1 "What We Do in the Shadows" Poster

In the year 2014 the New Zealand mockumentary horror comedy film “What We Do in the Shadows“ written, directed by, and starring Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement was released reporting the every-day-life of vampires. A selected camera crew was granted the permission to record the daily activities of the vampire group consisting of Viago, Vladislav, Deacon and Petyr and later on their new companions Nick who eventually becomes a vampire and Stu who becomes a werewolf after a certain incident. However, what makes “What We Do in the Shadows“ a mockumentary film?

First of all, what is a documentary film? It is most commonly known as a non-fiction movie whose sole purpose is to inform the audience about nature, crime, historical events or cultural facts by investigating events according to the topic of the documentary via camera. Mockumentary, also known as docucomedy, is a subgenre of the documentary film which focuses on the comedic way of informing the audience about the topic through its fictional setting and parody. This film genre mostly utilizes improvisation as a means to help maintaining the illusion of reality. Instead of having a narrator “What We Do in the Shadows” utilizes the interaction of the fellow vampires with the audience and the interaction between themselves as the way of communication and information transfer.

“What We Do in the Shadows” starts off with written text explaining what the documentary is about: every-day-life of a secret society and a camera crew is allowed to film the occurring events and is granted protection during the filming. After this short introduction the audience meets one of the vampires: Viago. He was sleeping in his coffin throughout the day until sunset, so he will be able to move around without being burned to a crisp by the sunlight. The comedy already starts here: instead of waking up as a normal human being he rises from his coffin as if gravity does not have any effect on him. Soon after he introduces the camera crew to the remaining vampires living in the house including Vladislav who is disturbed while being cozy with some girls, Deacon who sleeps like a bat and Petyr the oldest of the vampires aged around 8000 years with an appearance resembling Nosferatu.

Fig. 2

Throughout the movie the audience is presented facts about vampires in a humorous way ranging from having troubles getting up from the coffin and having meetings about daily chores to having the ability to hypnotize mortal humans and not being able to see their own reflections in the mirror which leads to asking other fellow vampires for advice in choosing a suiting outfit for the night hunt. The camera crew follows the group of vampires around while they are hunting for food at night. The gentle soul of the three Viago always worry about the furniture or the floor getting too dirty with the human blood while feasting and lays down newspaper. They document their night walks, run-ins with another werewolf group and their attempts of joining a club.  Afterwards Nick and another girl are invited for dinner at the vampire’s place. However, they eventually end up as the secret society’s dinner. Petyr accidentally turns Nick into a vampire and so the camera crew gets the chance to document the transformation from human into a vampire, how to deal with immortality, the sun, having the ability to fly, being able to turn into a bat etc. Soon after Nick introduces the secret society Stu, a mortal human who manages to widen their worldview and shows them how to use computers to search for information. Eventually, during a tragic accident Stu gets turned into a werewolf by the group of werewolves which the vampires always pick a fight with.

Overall, “What We Do in the Shadows” manages to parody the conflict between vampires and werewolves with various humorous interactions. Even though one might think it is a horror movie, it is actually the exact opposite: entertaining and funny.

Illustration List:
Fig. 1 "What We Do in the Shadows" Poster. At: https://zuts.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/what-we-do-in-the-shadows-poster.jpg (Accessed on 09/12/2017)
Fig. 2 At: http://www.forgetthebox.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/what-we-do-header.jpg (Accessed on 09/12/2017)