Quick review: What We Do in the Shadows (2015) and Witch-tober!

This blog was dead. Very dead. Steak through the heart levels of dead. But this has been a horrifying year, and not in the fun watching-a-horror-movie way, and I need a bit of Halloween joy in my life right now. Thus, this blog is at least temporarily rising from its coffin to discuss and review some movies this Halloween season.

However, this October I will not be focusing mainly on vampires or werewolves. Instead, I'm feeling like a bit of a witch hunt...

... but first, I finally saw What We Do in the Shadows.

I have no idea why I dragged my feet so long on What We Do in the Shadows. I think it was the hipster in me: I already saw and reviewed 2010's Vampires, which means I saw vampire mockumentaries before they were cool! But just like most hipster-esque excuses, that was a terrible reason not to embrace something popular. What We Do in the Shadows is a delight.

The minds that brought us Flight of the Concords and Thor: Ragnarok are the ones behind this take on mokumentary vampires, and the wonderful awkwardness of the characters and their dialogue creates a very similar tone. While Vampires (2010) may have gotten to the idea first, What We Do in the Shadows' dialogue and character interactions just make it a tighter and funnier film.

Both Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi just shine in this movie, and it's no wonder that they've both continued to have strong careers, including several Marvel products and a hand in a spin-off TV series for What We Do in the Shadows.

Unfortunately, like the previous mockumentary, Vampires, the movie does drag in the latter half and lose some of the tightness of its story. I think the television format will honestly be perfect for this subject and a bit of an improvement of pace, as a thematically tighter episode with concrete dilemmas that resolve within the episode would help with pacing over the continuous hour-and-a-half movie format. The pilot for the TV show aired today at NYCC, actually, and it apparently works well, like The Office with vampires and werewolves. I definitely am looking forward to that!

In the meantime, though, this is a good movie that is a lot of fun--perfect for the Halloween season.

 Rating: 4.5 out of 5 bites
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Now, as I mentioned, this month I'm not going to be mainly focusing on vampire movies (though I do plan on writing another quick review on the pre-Hayes-code film Dracula's Daughter at some point).

Instead, I'm focusing on the female terror of female terrors: the Witch. Through a few key films, I plan on exploring the history and depictions of witches from the 1940s to today. This will not be as extensive as my vampire or werewolf list, and it's possible your favorite witch won't make an appearance, but I think we have enough of a variety for some small pre-Halloween fun.

The list includes:

1. I Married a Witch (1942)
2. Witches of Eastwick (1987)
3. The Love Witch (2016)

So, let's boil our cauldrons and get to work...

~ LK