Lead Blogpost #2

When I first heard the title and realized the movie that Matthew discussed was about vampires, I honestly did not know what to expect. In my head I was imagining The Vampire Diaries, the one and only show I have watched about these creatures, but What We Do in the Shadows could not be more opposite from that. It was remarkably fresh with great humor and a different spin on a vampire movie that I have never seen before. It reminded me a lot of The Office because they had a film crew following them around, and the dry humor was very similar. I unfortunately was not able to watch the entire movie; however, from the clips and trailers that I was able to see, I found there to be many themes in the movie that we have talked about in class, including the incongruity theory and relief theory.  

In one scene in particular, the vampires get the police called on them because the neighbors complained of a disturbance. The officers come in and inspect their entire house, and the vampires are clearly nervous because they are afraid of what they may find. As they walk through, the tensions continue to rise from room to room. However, these tensions are broken because many jokes were made during the scene. For instance, the officers walk into one room to find three of the vampires hoisting each other up so they can cover up something. Instead of the police acknowledging how obvious it is that they are hiding something, they instead note that the vampires do not have any smoke detectors in the room. They just completely avoid the noticeable issue in the room, causing this scene to be funny and break the anxiousness that the vampires, as well as the viewer, gets as they watch the policemen tour the house.  This can be a form of relief theory because as everyone’s stress is rising, it is broken by the humor displayed in the scene. There are many hilarious scenes throughout the movie, and in each you can note the themes discussed in class.