What We Do In The Shadows (2014)

This movie was recommended to me around the time it came out by my uncle. It has also been recommended in the time since then by both Free Beer & Joe. I don't always trust Free Beer's taste in movies, but Joe and my uncle rarely lead me wrong. Disregarding whatever circumstances led me to watch this movie five years after it came out, I still feel like my hopes were set too high, and just ended up being somewhat let down.

Director/writer Taika Waititi jumped into the mainstream with "Thor: Ragnarok", but before that he was a star in his native New Zealand. Along with fellow kiwi Jemaine Clement, he created a mockumentary following a group of vampires around modern-day New Zealand. The group rent a house together, go to clubs to pick up girls and/or victims, and just go about their daily lives. When one victim doesn't die and ends up becoming a vampire, the balance of the group is thrown off and various hijinx ensue.

The introductions are great. Viago is a 379-year-old dandy; Vladislav is a 862-year-old Goth; Deacon is a 183-year-old former Nazi; Petyr is 8,000-years-old. The backstory for each character is funny, the way they introduce their lifestyle, the problems they face, all of that works. The thing is, after that, it just sort of ambles on aimlessly.

When Nick, the newest vampire comes in, they try to push more of a plot involving Nick completely failing to be secretive about his vampire-ness, bringing a vampire hunter to their house, and starting fights with a gang of werewolves (which was actually one of my favorite sub-plots). It didn't get necessarily 'bad', but I just felt like the air came out of the movie.

I still love Jemaine Clement, and I'm sure I'll watch another Waititi movie, and I'd even probably give "What We Do In The Shadows" another shot in the future to see if it grows on me - but for now, it suffered from too-high expectations.