Jonathan L. Crane explores horror and irony in his work ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’
What We Do in the Shadows (Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement, New Zealand, 2014) is a comedy horror film created in the form of a mockumentary. Throughout the film, a crew follows a house of vampires living in the Wellington suburbs. The film has now become a staple of the horror comedy genre and has had two successful spin off television series, Wellington Paranormal (Taika Waititi, Jermaine Clement and Paul Yates, New Zealand, 2018-2022) and What We Do in the Shadows (Jemaine Clement, United States, 2019-2024).
The film pays homage to both horror comedy and pure horror. The character of Vladislav (Jemaine Clement) exhibited an inspired characterization as Count Dracula in Bram Stokers 1992 staple of the vampire genre. Many other classic vampiric media is referenced within the film including Twilight, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, The Lost Boys and Interview with the Vampire. ‘Unlike most other forms of parody that work to denigrate their source material, horror parody seems to provoke laughter without acidulous, fatal ridicule.’ The film uses many common comedic styles, word play, dead pan delivery and leans into the general absurdity of horror and the supernatural. Fantasy tropes and common vampiric lore that is often depicted as horrific and unsettling like blood consumption or inviting in, are instead played for laughs. The film fits Cranes idea of a ‘postmodern horror’ as it ‘drifts back and forth between scares and laughs without warning.’ The rivalry and threat of harm between the vampires and werewolves drifts between horror and parody, ‘shift[ing]across registers, from horror to comedy and back again.’ The filmmakers play with the idea of genre just as they do with the documentary form. Throughout the film the audience can never truly ‘trust their senses’, to know if the humans, particularly Stu (Stu Rutherford) are in real danger. These moments of menace are usually then interjected with comedic relief, leaving uncertainty within the audience.
The vampires are constantly finding difficulty with the mundane like chores and modern technology which undercuts the horror humanizing the ‘monster.’ The vampires are at persistant threat from burning in the sunlight which makes the ‘monsters’ more comical as they are threatened by such simple dangers. The film finds the irony in horror as it elicits a duel response from the audience. The viewer is encouraged relate with the vampires emotions, struggles and shortcomings but also to laugh at the ineptitude.
Wellington Paranormal (Taika Waititi, Jermaine Clement and Paul Yates, New Zealand, 2018-2022)
What We Do in the Shadows (Jemaine Clement, United States, 2019-2024).
What We Do in the Shadows (Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement, New Zealand, 2014)
Jonathan L. Crane, “‘It was a dark and stormy night . . .’: Horror Films and the Problem of Irony,” Horror Film and Psychoanalysis: Freud’s Worst Nightmare (Cambridge: CUP, 2004), 142-156.