{"id":798,"date":"2019-05-11T00:39:52","date_gmt":"2019-05-11T04:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/?p=798"},"modified":"2019-05-12T19:18:57","modified_gmt":"2019-05-12T23:18:57","slug":"what-we-do-in-the-shadows-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/what-we-do-in-the-shadows-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving\/","title":{"rendered":"What We Do in the Shadows: The Gift That Keeps on Giving"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This entry will be spoilery for both the movie and TV show <\/i>What We Do in the Shadows. I\u2019ll try to be mindful of the TV spoilers (except for episode 7, which has had\u00a0a ton of coverage), but I\u2019m not losing sleep over \u201cspoiling\u201d a movie that\u2019s been out for five years. You have been warned.<\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The first time I watched What We Do in the Shadows<\/i>, I didn\u2019t really like it. I\u2019d heard so much about this hilarious film featuring vampire roommates in New Zealand, but it didn\u2019t grab me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But people whose opinions I trusted insisted the movie was awesome, so I gave it another shot.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And I noticed lots of subtle story and characterization details that I\u2019d missed on first viewing. Jokes I hadn\u2019t caught before finally landed.<\/p>\n

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And good lord, is this movie quotable.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Writer me was impressed that after all this time, someone had come up with a new approach to vampires. These roomies may be undead creatures of the\u00a0night, but they still bitch at each other about mundane stuff like keeping up with the chores and putting towels down on the good furniture before draining victims.<\/p>\n

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And you can have Edward \u201cAnnoying Prat\u201d Cullen; Viago is the cutest vampire ever. Don\u2019t @ me.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And now, the movie\u00a0is one of my desert island films. I won’t carry on about why, because there are few things less funny to me than someone trying to explain why they find a thing funny. I love it so much that I watched Thor: Ragnarok <\/i>entirely because WWDITS star Taika Waititi directed it. And that<\/i> movie did a few things I’d have thought were\u00a0impossible: It made me like Thor and Chris Hemsworth, and it finally pushed me over the line between \u201cThe Avengers<\/i> movies are a good time but I\u2019m not obsessed\u201d and \u201cOK, now<\/i> I\u2019m obsessed. Dammit.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But when I heard there was going to be a WWDITS TV show? I had doubts. Big ones. I\u2019d heard that nobody from the movie would be involved with the show, and the initial teasers I saw weren\u2019t all that impressive. And what could a TV show possibly add to such an awesomely offbeat\u00a0movie, anyhow?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As\u00a0the air date drew closer, I learned that Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement were very involved indeed. Phew. And the longer previews looked\u00a0much more promising.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even so, I was apprehensive when I sat down to watch\u00a0the pilot. For some reason, I\u2019m a tough audience for TV programs. I\u2019m not sure what a show has to have to hold my interest, but very few recent shows have grabbed me. And I didn\u2019t want a poorly-done show to taint my love\u00a0for the movie.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Seven episodes in, I can honestly say that I haven\u2019t been this hooked on a TV show since American Horror Story: Asylum<\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The vampire roomies\u2014Nandor, Nadja, and Laszlo\u2014 are\u00a0in Staten Island, New York rather than Wellington, New Zealand. But they live in a big spooky house just like their movie counterparts did, and like their movie counterparts, they seem ill-equipped to exist in the modern world.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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I mean, they have to go to a city council meeting when they want to take over New York. Quite a comedown from their days of conquering.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The show has one thing the movie did not have: Colin Robinson, a\u00a0fourth housemate. He\u2019s an energy vampire rather than a bloodsucker. You know that guy in your office who hangs over your cubicle wall and drones on and on about the most boring things possible until you can feel the ridges on your brain smoothing out? That’s Colin Robinson. He\u2019s feeding off your energy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While I think the show would still be good without Colin Robinson (sorry, but you must\u00a0use his full name when talking about him; I don’t make the rules), tossing him into the mix kicks the whole thing into high gear. He\u2019s a total prick, and he revels in it.\u00a0And the “nightwalkers” he lives with can’t do a thing about it, because he’s more powerful\u00a0than they are.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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“Go be immortal at brunch” might be my favorite line from a TV show ever.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fans of the movie have been clamoring for a film-TV show crossover, and on the day the seventh episode The Trial<\/i> was set to air, Taika Waititi dropped anvil-sized Twitter hints\u00a0that we were about to get our wish.<\/p>\n

We did, and so much more. All three members of the movie\u2019s vampire trio appeared in Staten Island because of reasons, but they weren\u2019t alone. Tilda freaking Swinton<\/i> appeared as her vampire character from Only Lovers Left Alive, <\/i>and she was accompanied by Evan Rachel Wood, Paul Reubens, Danny Trejo, and Wesley Snipes as the vampire characters they\u2019d portrayed in movies and TV shows. Oh, and Dave Bautista just happened to be there too.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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I\u2019d had no idea any of this was coming, and it may have been the most epic half-hour of TV I\u2019ve ever watched.\u00a0<\/span>It would have been so\u00a0easy\u00a0for the show to just coast on having all those famous faces, but the episode was really funny.\u00a0And it\u00a0<\/span>felt even more like a celebration\u00a0because we\u2019d all just learned that the show has been renewed for a second season.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The world is a steaming shitpile that seems to be getting worse by the day, if not the hour. Being able to escape into the world of\u00a0What We Do in the Shadows<\/em>\u00a0every week has been an unexpected gift.<\/p>\n

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In conclusion, the Procession of Shame needs to be a real thing that people actually do.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This entry will be spoilery for both the movie and TV show What We Do in the Shadows. I\u2019ll try…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[16,17,34,35],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":806,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions\/806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}