REMAIN IN LIGHT PRESENTEERT
WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS
een film van Jemaine Clement en Taika Waititi met Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi en Jonathan Brugh
Publieksprijs, Toronto International Film Festival 2014 (Midnight Madness) Publieksprijs en eervolle vermelding, Sitges International Film Festival 2014
van de makers van Flight of the Conchords
releasedatum: 18 december 2014
premièretheaters: TBA
PRAKTISCH
RELEASEDATUM 18 december 2014
PERSVOORSTELLING donderdag 11 december, 10.30, Het Ketelhuis
DISTRIBUTIE De Filmfreak Distributie / Remain in Light Van Hallstraat 54 1051 HH Amsterdam 020 4864940
BOEKINGEN Joop Verdenius en Katrien Lamers [email protected] | [email protected] 020 4864940 | 06 41378138
PERS The Publicity Company i.s.m. Remain in Light Natasja Wielandt [email protected] 020 6127000
www.filmfreaks.nl www.remaininlight.nl www.remaininlight.be
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SYNOPSIS
Vampier zijn in de 21ste eeuw is geen makkelijke opdracht. Dit ontdekken de documentairemakers die een drietal bloeddorstige huisgenoten volgen bij hun alledaagse bezigheden in Wellington, Nieuw-Zeeland. Wanneer ze hipster Nick in een vampier veranderen, worden de rollen echter omgedraaid. Het is niet de nieuweling die de kneepjes van het vak moet leren, maar de onsterfelijken die worden ingewijd in de moderne wereld van modetrends, Facebook en technologie. Integreren in de samenleving is nooit zo moeilijk geweest voor een vampier.
De hilarische mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows, geschreven en geregisseerd door Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) en Taika Waititi (Eagle vs Shark), won een publieksprijs op het Toronto International Film festival en de publieksprijs en een eervolle vermelding op het Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival.
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SPECIFICATIES
LAND: Nieuw-Zeeland
JAAR: 2014
DUUR: 86 minuten
BIOSCOOPFORMAAT: 2.35 : 1
GELUID: Dolby Digital
TAAL: Engels gesproken
ONDERTITELING: Nederlands
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CAST
VLADISLAV Jemaine Clement VIAGO Taika Waititi DEACON Jonathan Brugh PETYR Ben Fransham NICK Cori Gonzalez-Macuer STU Stuart Rutherford JACKIE Jackie van Beek
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CREW
REGIE & SCENARIO Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi PRODUCER Taika Waititi Emanuel Michael Chelsea Winstanley CO-PRODUCERS Pamela Harvey-White EXECUTIVE PRODUCER Jemaine Clement CINEMATOGRAFIE Richard Bluck D.J. Stipsen PRODUCTION DESIGN Ra Vincent GELUID Plan 9 KOSTUUMS Samantha Morley MONTAGE Tom Eagles Yana Gorskaya Jonathan Woodford-Robinson CASTING Tina Cleary MAKE-UP Amy McLennan
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AN INTERVIEW WITH SOME VAMPIRES
Interview – “Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi: Bloody hilarious”
These two have been friends for years, and their latest film What We Do In The Shadows, which they co-wrote, co-directed, and co-star in, is not just a grand celebration of ordinary vampires, but of a fruitful creative relationship. They have made their names separately with Flight of the Conchords and Boy, but some of their first steps in the entertainment world were made together, at Victoria University in the 1990s.
"I don't remember the moment when we actually met, but I remember the moment I first saw Jemaine," Waititi recalls. "It was in the library at Victoria University. I remember looking across and going, 'Ugh. Man, look at that dick!' because he had this colourful Samoan shirt on, and I remember thinking, 'Oh, he's probably one of those snooty arty types.'
"And that night there were auditions for a university show, and I saw him there and thought, 'Oh no, not that guy again'."
Jemaine laughs: "I remember that same moment seeing Taika and thinking, 'What a dick!' because he had a reggae hat on, one of those big red, yellow and green crocheted hats. So both of us based our instant dislike on each other's clothes. Both of us were sending misleading messages about our ethnicities!"
Fortunately, they both got through the auditions for the show, and started hanging out, which quickly changed their initial judgments.
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"I think when I saw Taika do his audition bits, he was actually one of the few people who made me laugh."
They went on to form comedy acts, So You're A Man (which included Bret McKenzie), and The Humourbeasts, and have since collaborated on episodes of Flight of the Conchords, and Radiradirah, as well as Eagle vs Shark - Waititi's first feature in which he had Clement as the lead.
But pretty much throughout their entire relationship, they've been thinking of making a vampire movie together - they've both been keen on the genre since they were young.
"I've loved vampires since I was a kid, or loved a lot of the vampire movies that I saw. Anything with sharp teeth really," Waititi explains. "I remember you could get those fake vampire teeth, and I remember just keeping them in all the time."
"Me too! They were these plastic ones with hinges," Clement adds.
"They were the classic ones," Waititi agrees, "and they made your gums bleed because they were quite sharp."
Clement even started a gang of 10-year-old schoolboys called The Vampires.
"The only rule was that everyone had to wear those fake teeth. And then we would ride around the streets of Masterton on bikes, yelling out to girls: 'I vant to drink your blood!'"
They didn't actually ever give the blood-drinking thing a go though.
"No, we were only 10! We'd stay on the bikes."
Waititi completed his fang-teeth look with a coat his mum found.
"I was a big fan of The Lost Boys, and I asked my mum to help me get a trenchcoat like the one Corey Haim wears. I think it was a women's one 'cos it had these big shoulder pads."
They remember first creating vampire characters together as part of a skit they did for a fundraising show in 2000.
"I think that's where it started," Clement muses.
"Did we do a song?" Waititi wonders.
"Yeah, I think we did a song. And me, you, and Bret did a song about being werewolves too."
"Vampires singing a song about werewolves? Oh man."
That was obviously a prescient performance though, as six years later, they decided to test out the idea of making a vampire mockumentary together, and created a short film centred around a bunch of vampire flatmates in Wellington. It was part funding application, part testing the water, part distillation of ideas.
They asked friends and family if they wanted to be involved, and shot a bunch of documentary- style interviews with whoever turned up.
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"We didn't plan any of the characters, who they would be, or what they would be like," Waititi explains. "I wanted to try out the obsession with cleanliness, and whatever we tried out back then, we just kind of stuck with it really, so cleanliness became one of Viago's traits as an 18th- century dandy. Johnny Brugh, who plays Deacon, was really sick at the time, and he just spent his whole interview lying down on the couch, so that became the thing that Deacon did - he's always lying around, being the lazy, cool, vampire who didn't give a shit."
Their Eastern European accents were a given though - the pair wanted their vampire characters to have an air of being quite foreign, and old school.
"One of the things we were hoping that would come through thematically was xenophobia - the idea that these guys were still very foreign in New Zealand, and the idea that they've been chased right round the world down to Wellington, so they've had this life of constantly running, kind of in exile," Clement nods. His character Vladislav seems to have had a particularly tough time in centuries gone past, and has become a bit of a pervert as a consequence - a benevolent pervert though.
The short film/pitch turned out well, so they decided to go for the feature length version, and then, well, they both got busy.
"We're actually pretty embarrassed, because we must've been mentioning this movie in interviews for about seven years," Clement laughs.
"I found these old emails between us from 2007 saying things like, "We've gotta make this vampire movie man! We've gotta stop messing around and do it."
"And it was five years before we got around to it," Waititi adds.
Needless to say, the vampire craze found a whole new level of crazy in that period - Blade, and Underworld had been and gone, but Twilight rose up in their place, not to mention Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Byzantium, Let The Right One In, 30 Days Of Night, and countless others. It did give them pause for thought.
"I was always scared that people would have reached the point of going 'I never want to see another vampire movie again' by now," Waititi explains.
But the recent obsession with the genre has made it ripe for mocking in many ways, and reviewers have been very quick to understand that WWDITS is a fresh, Wellington-inspired version of the well-trodden storylines, and mostly harks back to old school vampire mythology. Plus, it's funny as hell.
"We did want to film the character of Nick, who is the new guy who's excited about becoming a vampire, we wanted to have him see the poster for Twilight Breaking Dawn Part II being pulled down, just as a message to say, 'Sorry bro, it's not cool any more, nobody cares'. But we didn't manage to pull that off," Clement laughs. "Otherwise most of the genre references are pretty old. Our vampires are pretty traditional - they burst into flames rather than sparkle. They turn into bats, which I'm pretty sure modern vampires don't do."
"I guess they thought it wasn't all that cool anymore," Waititi smiles. "It's like turning into a big black butterfly."
The pair wrote the script together, initially going back and forward via email, sending each other scenes, and ideas for twists, or jokes.
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Then they got together for three days in a house to fill in all the holes, and finally took it in turns doing re-writes. By the time they were finished, they had 150 pages of polished, precise material. And then they took the unusual route of not showing it to anyone - that's right, the crew and the cast didn't get to see the script.
"Basically we were trying to keep things spontaneous, and for the actors to be surprised when things happened," Clement explains.
"Actors are terrible at overthinking things before they turn up to work, and they decide on a way they're going to do it and then it's hard to break them out of it," Waititi adds.
"It was also about getting a documentary feel - you want people to say things their own way, naturally, and for it to look like they're thinking of it right then."
So the film was largely improvised, with Clement and Waititi pointing cast and crew in the right direction when they turned up each day, gently nudging the action along through their own characters as well as from the directors' chairs.
"We were doing a lot of improvising, but a lot of the time, for Jemaine and myself, we were saying lines we'd written into the script because we'd want to make sure someone else would respond in a certain way - we were trying to direct the story while also making stuff up," Waititi explains.
"That was interesting sometimes because people would be riffing off each other, and maybe going down a totally different path, and we'd be standing there going "Yeeeeessss, but what about the spaghetti?'"
(The importance of the spaghetti will become clear once you see the film.)
"Sometimes they assumed because they hadn't seen a story or a script that we were totally making it up, and they would go off on completely different tangents, and then keep pushing them."
The unconventional shooting style had its challenges (including creating more than 150 hours of footage which took 15 months to edit), but it clearly brought out the best in the cast, too - aside from the wonderful banter between the core vampire crew, look out particularly for the excellent scenes with the cops, the werewolf encounters, and Jackie Van Beek playing Jackie, a mum who's slightly obsessed with the idea of becoming a vampire herself.
It's a unique film - one injected with plenty of zany humour, physical and spoken, and a general penchant for preposterous situations, but also a poignancy and heart that allows some more philosophical contemplations to peek through occasionally.
"We just thought there hadn't really been anything like this before, about vampires being very normal, geeky, uncool. And just how boring it is. It's interesting to think about what you would do if you could live forever, and realising there's so many exciting things you could do, but you'd probably just be lazy. A few people would do the exciting stuff, but most would just be like, 'Ah well, maybe I'll learn to play the violin tomorrow'," Waititi explains.
"It's probably good that we waited this long to make the film, because we're older," Clement laughs, "because you always think you're going to be more mature when you're older, but then when you're older but you don't feel any different. And what if that was multiplied by 20 or 30 or whatever it takes to get to 800 years. Would you be any wiser? You assume so, but maybe not.
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Maybe you'd still have the same issues."
It seems that even if you get to live eternally, there's a good possibility you'll still end up flatting with a bunch of people who sometimes annoy you, having arguments about dishes, or cleaning up blood splatter in the living room, wondering how to capture the attention of the object of your affection, trying to figure out where you belong, and protecting your friends from being attacked by werewolves.
Bron http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11272046
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OVER JEMAINE CLEMENT & TAIKA WAITITI
“I think people are desperate for something a little smarter than Twilight” – Taika Waititi
Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi – Regisseurs
Jemaine Clement en Taika Waititi leren elkaar kennen aan de Victoria University of Wellington waar ze allebei een dramaopleiding volgen. Het Nieuw-Zeelandse duo krijgt al snel naam als up- and-coming komieken door hun optredens met de door hen opgerichte gezelschappen So You’re a Man en The Humourbeasts, waarmee ze op eigen bodem heel populair zijn en in 1999 een Billy T James Award in ontvangst mogen nemen.
Hoewel het duo sindsdien steeds opnieuw samenwerkingen aangaat, maken Clement en Waititi in eerste instantie naam voor zichzelf. Clement richt zich daarbij voornamelijk op acteren en schrijven. Na een aantal optredens in korte films en tv-series bedenkt hij samen met Bret McKenzie, eveneens een lid van het So You’re a Man-gezelschap, de Amerikaanse komische tv-serie Flight of the Conchords (2007-2009) voor zender HBO. De serie vertelt over het dagelijks leven van enkele wannabe-muzikanten, in feite gefictionaliseerde versies van de makers zelf, die in de Verenigde Staten aan de bak proberen te komen als folk-duo.
Na zich in eerste instantie op een acteercarrière te hebben gericht, houdt Waititi zich de laatste tien jaar vooral bezig met regisseren en schrijven. Al met zijn tweede korte film Two Cars, One Night (2004) komt zijn carrière van de grond. De film sleept maar liefst negen prijzen in de wacht, waaronder de Short Award op het AFI Film Festival, de Panorama Short Film Award op het International Film Festival in Berlijn en de Short Film Competition Award op het Seattle International Film Festival. In 2005 kan hij zelfs scoren met een Oscarnominatie. Met zijn tweede speelfilm, het coming-of-age-drama Boy (2010), valt Waititi opnieuw meerdere malen in de prijzen. Zo wint hij de Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk Grand Prix voor Beste Film op het International Film Festival in Berlijn, de Prijs voor Meest Populaire Film op het International Film Festival in Melbourne en de Publieksprijs voor Beste Film op het Sydney Film Festival.
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Clement en Waititi zetten hun samenwerking voort met Flight of the Conchords, waarvan Waititi een aantal afleveringen regisseert. Clement verschijnt op zijn beurt in een aantal afleveringen van de komische sketchreeks Radiradirah (2010), waarin Waititi een vaste rol heeft. Ook speelt Clement de hoofdrol in Waititi’s speelfilmdebuut Eagle vs. Shark (2007). Maar tijdens hun jarenlange vriendschap houdt het duo steeds één idee in gedachten: een vampierenfilm. Beiden zijn sinds hun jeugd namelijk grote fans van het genre. In 2000 doen ze hun eerste poging om hun bloeddorstige personages te ontwikkelen als ze een sketch opvoeren tijdens een liefdadigheidsvoorstelling.
Voor What We Do In the Shadows (2014) werken Clement en Waititi niet alleen samen als regisseursduo, ze zijn ook beiden verantwoordelijk voor het scenario én spelen twee van de hoofdrollen. Wanneer ze allebei met huisgenoten samenleven, komen ze op het idee van een vampieren-mockumentary, in hun eigen woorden een soort gotische, bovennatuurlijke versie van He Died With a Falafel in His Hand van Richard Lowenstein. Beïnvloed door een aantal succesvolle horrorfilms uit de jaren 80 – The Lost Boys, Fright Night, American Werewolf in London, The Thing – en hun voorliefde voor komedie, besluiten ze deze twee elementen in een vampierenparodie te verenigen. Uitgaande van het idee ‘heeft het leven meer zin als het eindeloos zou duren?’ kiezen ze bewust voor de vorm van een mockumentary, juist om te voorkomen dat het verhaal te veel naar het paranormale of ongeloofwaardige zou neigen. Toch duurt het nog zeven jaar voordat het project gerealiseerd wordt.
Hun samenwerking wordt mooi verdeeld doordat Waititi zich voornamelijk op de technische kant concentreert, terwijl Clement zich meer met de acteurs bezighoudt. “I’ve obviously got more experience as a director, just through my stuff,” aldus Waititi, “but we’ve obviously both been on sets of various things. He knows exactly what’s going on, and knows what he wants. (…) So it was quite good working that way.’
De opnamen konden uiteindelijk na vijf weken afgerond worden. Vanwege hun insteek om zoveel mogelijk te improviseren, leverde dat meer dan 130 uur aan materiaal op. Een pluspunt daarbij was dat er onder andere beroep kon worden gedaan op de crew van collega Peter Jackson. Maar het nadeel was dat door het teveel aan ruw materiaal de montage zo’n 14 maanden extra productietijd opeiste.
FILMOGRAFIE JEMAINE CLEMENT o 2014 WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS van Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi MUPPETS MOST WANTED van James Bobin RIO 2 van Carlos Saldanha o 2012 MEN IN BLACK 3 van Barry Sonnenfield o 2011 RIO van Carlos Saldanha o 2010 PREDICAMENT van Jason Stutter DINNER FOR SCHUCKS van Jay Roach DESPICABLE ME van Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud o 2009 DIAGNOSIS: DEATH van Jason Stutter GENTLEMEN BRONCOS van Jared Hess o 2007 EAGLE VS SHARK van Taika Waititi o 2005 FIRE BALL van Toon Wang o 2004 FUTILE ATTRACTION van Mark Prebble o 2002 TONGAN NINJA van Jason Stutter
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FILMOGRAFIE TAIKA WAITITI (als regisseur)
o What We Do in the Shadows (2014) o Boy (2010) o 42 One Dream Rush (2009) o Eagle vs Shark (2007) o Tama Tu (2005) (short) o Heinous Crime (2004) (short) o Two Cars, One Night (2004) (short)
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OVER JONATHAN BRUGH
Jonathan Brugh - DEACON
De Nieuw-Zeelandse komiek Jonathan Brugh heeft al meer dan vijftien jaar ervaring met zijn unieke benadering van theater. Aanvankelijk treedt hij op als helft van het tragikomische theaterduo Sugar & Spice dat vanwege hun absurde humor wordt gelauwerd door theatercritici in Nieuw-Zeeland en Australië. In 1996 wordt de Chapman Tripp Award voor Best Comic Performance aan het duo toegekend, een blijk van waardering die twee jaar later met de Billy T James Award wordt aangevuld.
In 2001 schrijft Brugh zich opnieuw in aan de universiteit om zijn opleiding Art and Design af te maken. Zijn studie geeft hem de gelegenheid om zich naast zijn werk als professionele fotograaf te concentreren op een onderzoekende vertelling van het verhaal van Madame Lucy Tuesday, een idee dat hij later verwerkt tot een soloshow. Twee jaar later, in 2003, schrijft Brugh zijn onemanshow The Fall and Rise or: The Rise and Fall of Dinky Jon, een voorstelling die hij eveneens solo uitvoert, met de stunts van een echte superheld. Na zijn volgende project My Brother and I Are Porn Stars wordt opnieuw uitgepakt met een soloshow die de titel The Legend of Madam Lucy Tuesday draagt. Vervolgens creëert hij als entertainer het typetje T- RETZ, een bas spelende gemuteerde clown die denkt dat hij Robert Smith van de muziekgroep The Cure is.
Naast een populaire komiek is Brugh een aspirant acteur in film en tv-series. Twee in het oog springende televisie- en filmoptredens uit zijn ontluikende acteercarrière zijn zijn rol als gastheer in de sitcom The Jaquie Brown Diaries (2008-2009), over een onzekere, door status geobsedeerde verslaggever in een nieuwsprogramma, en zijn rol als datingcoach in de hilarische komedie How to Meet Girls From a Distance (2012). Voor die laatste rol wordt Brugh
15 in 2012 dan ook genomineerd voor een New Zealand Film and TV Award voor Beste Bijrol. Zijn humor en talent om te improviseren komen vervolgens goed van pas om zijn personage, ‘bad boy’ Deacon, in What We Do in the Shadows (2014) vorm te geven.
FILMOGRAFIE o 2014 WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS van Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi o 2012 HOW TO MEET GIRLS FROM A DISTANCE van Dean Hewison
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FESTIVALS EN PRIJZEN
PRIJZEN & NOMINATIES
Nominatie Crystal Bear - Berlin International Film Festival 2014 Winnaar Publieksprijs - Neuchâtel International Fantasy Film Festival 2014 Winnaar Publieksprijs en Eervolle Vermelding - Sitges Catalonian International Film Festival 2014 Winnaar People’s Choice Award - Toronto International Film Festival 2014 (Midnight Madness)
FESTIVALS
Sundance Film Festival 2014 Berlin International Film Festival 2014 Toronto International Film Festival 2014 Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2014 AFI Fest 2014 Zurich Film Festival 2014 Athens Film Festival 2014 Bergen International Film Festival 2014 Sydney Film Festival 2014 Cornwall Film Festival 2014 Cork International Film Festival 2014 Leeds International Film Festival 2014 Virginia Film Festival 2014 Imagine Limited Edition 2014 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival 2014 Stanley Film Festival 2014 Fantasy Filmfest 2014 Lund Fantastisk Film Festival 2014 Mill Valley Film Festival 2014 Monsters of Film 2014 Warsaw Film Festival 2014 Night Visions Film Festival 2014 Abertoir Horror Festival 2014 Bath Film Festival 2014 Torino Film Festival 2014 Mar del Plata Film Festival 2014 Razor Reel Flanders Film Festival 2014 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2014
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DE INTERNATIONALE PERS
★★★★ ‘Mark my words, there is something very funny going on here’ THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD
‘What We Do in the Shadows is often brilliantly funny’ THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
‘What We Do in the Shadows will make you laugh ‘til you bleed’ ‘It’s just fantastic to see these hilarious filmmakers creating. If we can get more comedy out of them, the world will be a much funnier (if perhaps slightly bloodier) place’ TWITCH FILM
‘Despite the simple structure – and a crack at every obvious vampire gag in the book – the film remains highly amusing from beginning to end’ ‘Though Waititi and Clement are the clear standouts, special mention must go to another Conchords regular, Rhys Darby, as the puritanical leader of the local werewolf pack’ NEWS AUSTRALIA
‘A very funny Kiwi take on vampire lore and its application to the modern world’ ‘Ace writing and comic performances’ ‘Anyone intending to hop on this particular subgenre bandwagon has a hard act to follow’ THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
‘What We Do in the Shadows is a fun spoof that piles on the laughs while keeping within the macabre tones of classic vampire stories’ ‘This will be one of the best comedies of the year’ FILM PULSE
‘You’d think the vampire genre had been sucked dry, filmmakers have struck a rich vein of low- key, self-deprecating Kiwi humour’ THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
‘It’s bloody hilarious’ ‘What We Do In The Shadows is (...) so unrelentingly funny that you’ll miss half the jokes through laughing’ FILM INK
‘Comedy with bite’ ‘The jokes come thick and fast, and the delivery by the cast is hilarious’ ‘So cohesive is this troupe and their fresh bite at an over-chewed genre, one can only hope this film’s success fosters further collaboration’ CANBERRA TIMES
‘Taika and Jemaine are so immensely charming as well as funny, and they surrounded themselves with a great cast’ SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
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‘It’s charming and hilarious and brilliantly acted by every single member of the fantastic ensemble cast’ ‘What We Do in the Shadows is a comedy that should put New Zealand on the map, with a share house everyone will want to spend time in’ SWITCH
‘It is the anti-Twilight (and that's a compliment), as well as a reminder that Waititi and Clement are capable of much more’ THE AGE
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