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Movie review

Vampires meet the real world in lighthearted ‘Shadows’

Unison Films/Courtesy of Unison Films

Even before Bela Lugosi was buried wearing his Dracula costume in 1956, the vampire genre had passed into the realm of self-parody. Today, no lampoon can surpass in camp and silliness the last two episodes of the “Twilight” series. As for reality TV shows like “Big Brother” and “The Real World,” what more can be said?

But how about combining the two, as does the New Zealand comedy team of Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi? By re-creating both benighted formulae with uncanny accuracy, adding a measure of cinema literacy, and framing the shtick with throwaway, absurdist dialogue and details, they have achieved a farce nearly on a par with “Zoolander” (2001), “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,” (2006) and that gold standard of inanity, “¡Three Amigos!” (1986). Like those films, “Shadows” has its share of lines that will be repeated by fans ad infinitum (a favorite: “Yes, now Google it”).

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It opens with the rising coffin lid of genteel revenant Viago (Waititi, a clone of Kevin Kline and Robert Downy Jr. with a Werner Herzog accent), who rises to greet the night in a (literally) winking allusion to F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu” (1922). Foppish and shy, a nerdy version of Tom Cruise’s 18th century bloodsucking decadent Lestat in “Interview With the Vampire” (1994), he introduces his “flatmates.” They include Vladislav (Clement), a ringer for Gary Oldman’s Vlad the Impaler, though with the less fearsome sobriquet of “Vlad the Poker”; Deacon (Jonathan Brugh), who looks like Dudley Moore after a bender; and long-in-the-tooth, 8,000-year-old Petyr (Ben Fransham), Nosferatu in the flesh, or what’s left of it.

Like all such households, they have a chore wheel, house meetings, squabbles over slobbiness (Deacon refuses to place newspapers in front of the sofa when he exsanguinates a victim), and pinned-up photos, daguerrotypes, and centuries-old engravings of good times gone by. Endearingly innocent despite their innate evil, they resemble less cool versions of the “Wild and Crazy Guys” from “SNL,” especially when they venture into the wilds of Wellington after dark in search of prey.

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These forays into the mortal world elevate “Darkness” above the level of hilarious 10-minute skit as the flatmates meet but don’t eat some human friends who initiate them into such mysteries as cable TV, selfies, and Skype. But their budding worldliness also brings them into contact with mortality itself, which their eternal living death denies them, adding a wisp of profundity to the fun.

“But this is what happens when you’re a vampire,” says Deacon to a bereaved friend. “You have to watch everyone die.” He then lists some death scenarios, including fashioning a mask out of crackers and inadvertently being pecked to death by ducks. “I hope I have made you feel better,” he adds. As a matter of fact, he does.


Peter Keough can be reached at petervkeough@gmail.com.