Mockumentaries are, of course, no longer original. Gone are the days of Spinal Tap. But can one about four vampires living together bring some life to the genre?
Taika Waititi (who along with Clement also wrote and directed) is amusing as Viago, particularly his views on "dating" the women he's about to kill. He is quite one-dimensional, however. Clement as Vladislav is by far the best character, whereas the two others are just unfunny pains to have around. The characters as such are shockingly shallow (yes, even for a comedy) considering the writers had thousands of years of history to get something good out of. With large parts of the cast so uninteresting, the jokes had better be good.
There are definitely fun moments here, some of the jokes are excellent. However, the set-up really isn't. It follows the genre a bit too meticulously, meaning it comes off formulaic at times. They simply apply everyday life to vampires, and try to pass it off as smart and original. I understand that that is much of the premise for a mockumentary, but it's stale enough as a concept now for a film to need more.
Another limitation of the mockumentary is the filming and the cut-in interviews. Both tedious and adding nothing in terms of humour nor cleverness. Having a camera crew "on site", means the angles will be bad and when the concept has been done to death over a couple of decades, it offers very little. The action-scenes are usually frenzied and accompanied by extremely annoying music, adding to the feeling of unwelcome editing-chaos.
In single scenes, this flick is quite smart and extremely funny. But as a whole, it seems a bit of a diamond in the rough. Like a good idea worked too little on, or by the wrong people.
5/10
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