What We Do in the Shadows began with a group of friends. Its creators, Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement, are a big deal now. Waititi is fresh off of his Oscar win for last year’s tragicomic World War II film Jojo Rabbit and has just been announced as the director of an upcoming Star Wars film. Clement has starred in, written, and directed a number of films and shows, in addition to his role in the hit band Flight of the Conchords and its spinoff television series. What We Do in the Shadows returned in April and wrapped up its latest season in June, but its roots go back much further, to a time before the duo was globally famous.
In 2005, Waititi and Clement put together a short film with their friends and roommates in New Zealand. Titled What We Do in the Shadows: Interviews with Some Vampires, the mockumentary featured vampires dealing with the unique challenges that come with both being supernatural creatures in the modern world and managing life with roommates. The concept finds much of its humor in the absurdity of this juxtaposition. Years later, with successful international projects under their belts, they would return to the idea, developing it into the hit film What We Do in the Shadows.
Presented as a product of the (fictional) New Zealand Documentary Board, the film follows four vampires “living in a flatting situation,” each of whom fits a genre archetype ranging from a European dandy to an ancient, bestial, Nosferatu-like creature. From the very beginning, it throws the viewer into this strange situation, and the “documentary” conceit is played straight. The opening scene features a relatable argument over chores, which starts out diplomatic but soon turns angry when the roommate who is not pulling his weight, Deacon, is confronted.
“I do my flat chores,” Deacon insists, and his roommates immediately point out that not only has he not done the dishes in five years but that they’re embarrassed to have guests over because of the bloody scene in the kitchen. Deacon responds, incredulously, “Why does it matter? You bring them over; you kill them!” This settles the argument, and Deacon smugly proclaims, “Vampires don’t do dishes,” only to end up guilted into doing them. From this, the film cuts to an intro montage set to Norma Tanega’s 1966 song “You’re Dead,” which fits so well that you’d be forgiven for thinking it was written for the film.
This combination of odd-couple antics and theater of the absurd worked brilliantly in the film, and it lends itself just as well to the TV spinoff, which follows a different group of vampire roommates, this one on the glamorous shores of Staten Island. Dispatched centuries ago to conquer America, the vampires have seemingly never left the island, which, as far as they know, is all of America. (They haven’t successfully conquered Staten Island, either.) This group consists of a medieval Turko-Persian king, Nandor (Kayvan Novak), an English nobleman, Laszlo (Matt Berry), and his wife, a Romani vampire named Nadja (Natasia Demetriou). The three “traditional” vampires are served by Guillermo (Harvey Guillen), an ardent fan of Antonio Banderas’s character in Interview With the Vampire, whose example as the “first Hispanic vampire” he seeks to follow. Joining them is an altogether modern horror, Colin (Mark Proksch), an “energy vampire” who can suck the will to live out of someone through small talk and conversation about TV settings. The resulting ensemble might be the strongest comedy cast currently on TV.
Where the film is short and tight, the show is longer and looser, allowing it to feature a broader range of ordinary social interactions and supernatural phenomena. Episodes hone in on individual situations, such as the vampires attending a city council meeting, facing vampiric justice after their antics derail bigger plans, and taking a DNA ancestry test, which reveals that the vampires have thousands of present-day descendants and that Guillermo is a descendant of the legendary vampire hunter Van Helsing.
Season two opens in the aftermath of these discoveries. Guillermo has been concealing his heritage, though his ancestral talents have proved useful in defending his masters from the many vampires who’ve come to kill them without their even being aware of it. This background also gives the new season more of a narrative thrust than season one, which felt more like a series of linked short stories.
Guillermo can’t seem to help himself from falling into the footsteps of his famous ancestor, at one point joining a nature group only to discover that it’s a front for amateur vampire hunters. Meanwhile, the vampires find themselves in novel situations. In one instance, they panic after receiving an email that threatens Bloody Mary’s curse upon anyone who does not forward it to 10 more people — a form of magic against which they know no defense.
What We Do in the Shadows is a passion project. We don’t normally think about roommate comedies in those terms, but it’s evident in the fact that Waititi and Clement keep returning to this concept even after their high-profile successes. The show is not a rehash of Flight of the Conchords or even of their earlier spinoff show, Wellington Paranormal. By placing the action in New York, the creators allow a different kind of story to be told. The city itself is a symbol of the Old World’s aspirations in the New. The vampires came seeking freedom, experimentation, and conquest. They just weren’t very good at it.
Jibran Khan is a freelance writer and researcher. From 2017 to 2019, he was the Thomas L. Rhodes fellow at the National Review Institute.
