The two movies that I covered for this assignment were a drama called “Night of the Living Dead” and a comedy called “What We Do in the Shadows”. Both movies have their own unique artistic approach which kept me intrigued throughout. The movie “Night of the Living Dead” was produced in 1968 by George Romero. This movie was in black and white due to the time in which this movie was made. However, black and white movies add an extra element of suspense into scary movies like this. “Night of the Living Dead” was of the first zombie type movies and it helped catapult the zombie craze that we know today. This movie was based in a small rural town. A zombie outbreak was something that these people were not used to and at first did not know how to react. Most of the movie takes place in a two-story home with a basement.
There are six main survivors within the home and their main goal is to secure the home and try to survive. Attempts to use a truck to escape was stopped when the truck caught on fire and killing two people. The zombies grew in numbers outside the home and continued to fight to get inside. Ultimately a young girl within the home, changes into a zombie and first kills her parents. The last survivor, a young black man was able to secure himself in the basement right as the house in being over taken by the zombies. The next scene shows the follow morning and there are groups established to help stopped the zombies. One main group goes to search the house, and along the way kill multiple zombies. The young black man survives the night and hears the people outside. He leaves the basement and approaches a window in a slow motion, causing the group to think that he is a zombie. The group mistakenly thinks he is a zombie and kills him.
This movie brought many artistic elements into play with the black/ white feature, to the use of sounds and music for suspense, and the use of make-up and costume design. Of course, a time as gone on, the zombie movies have grown with advancements in the use of gore effects. I consider this movie to be a classic because of the story behind the movie was one of the first of its kind.
The movie “What We Do in the Shadows” was the movie I enjoyed more because of the directors’ unique style of making it appear like the characters are real-life characters and how the audience was brought into the home / life of vampires. Initially there are four vampires living within the same home and each with its owns cultural diversity. One vampire is named Viago whom is 379 years old, another is name Deacon who is 183 years old, Petyr who is 8000 years old, and Vladislav who is high in age. The vampires are attempting to fit into everyday life, while fulfilling the need for human blood. The vampires allow a film crew to follow them in their daily lives, leading up the unholy masquerade ball. Throughout the movie there is tons of comic relief with the how the main characters speak and how they act. Tensions run high in the house at times due to various topics like who is doing what chores.
The group ventures out at night only and tries to attend many local bars. What makes this comical is the fact that the only way a vampire can entire a place, is that they must be invited, and many night clubs would not just invite them in. The vampires befriend a few people within the city that helps bring victims to the home for what they call a “party”. Typically, most of the victims get killed, however there is one victim that gets turned into a vampire. He is a young man that has a hard time with not telling everyone that he is a vampire. The group tries to help guide him in the right direct. Ultimately, one of the Petyr gets killed because of the new vampire’s inability to keep in mouth closed.
Throughout the movie, these vampires attend many parties, learn how to use the internet, how to use a cell phones and how to send text messages. One funny part was when Deacon sent a text message to Viago that read, “there is a crucifix behind you”. The day of the unholy masquerade ball comes, and the vampires attend but bring a human to the party. This causes a big disturbance within the party because most of the party goes want to eat the human, but the group will not let them. This leads to a fight between Vladislav and his arch enemies (the Beast) lover. In the course of the fight, the human kills the lover because he was cheating and trying to kill Vladislav. They get kicked out of the party. After leaving the party, the group meets a group of werewolves in the park. The human turns into a werewolf and brings the werewolves and vampires together as friends.
The style of this movie and making it appear like it is a documentary, allowed for the movie to be more personable and brought you inside of the movie. The scenes within their home is unique in design with antiques and an older style of decor. There is one scene that stood out to me regarding comic relief and what kinds of struggles Viago faced. He is a bit of a neat freak who likes things to be clean. In this scene, Viago brings a young women home and says to the camera that he knows he is going to kill her, but he would like to give her a good time first. So, he proceeds to talk to her, give her a flower, and play some music. You then see him laying down newspaper on the floor, covering the couch and putting on a bib. He proceeds to bite her but mistakenly hits the main artery, causing blood to spray everywhere.
Jeremy's blog 