Commentary: ‘What We Do In The Shadows’ Returned Mystery To Vampires
by Frank Martin
A huge component of vampire stories is mystery. Vampires are meant to be creatures that hide in the shadows. Their whole world is supposed to be shrouded in darkness. But this has become increasingly difficult with more vampire stories in the world. It’s harder to give them a unique mystique as so many people are familiar with their tropes. They avoid sunlight, they don’t like garlic, silver burns them, and they drink blood. Since all of these are well known, it is important to create new details and increase their allure. Twilight did this by having them sparkle. But perhaps no vampire story has created a more mysterious approach to the genre than What We Do In The Shadows.
The television series follows a family of vampires who live in a decrepit mansion in Staten Island. The main characters feature a trio of standard vampires, all with the classic tropes fans know and love. But there’s also a character named Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch), who an “energy vampire.” This is a completely different kind of species and he undergoes quite a transformation across the series. At one point he appears to die, but he is in fact reborn as a baby who rapidly ages until he eventually turns right back into the energy vampire he was before.
Part of what makes this character arc so interesting is that none of the characters, Colin Robinson included, have any idea what’s happening to him. Energy vampires and their life cycle are largely a mystery to them. This creates an incredible sense of mystery that is absent from a lot of vampire stories. A lot of times, these stories will try to incorporate some new feature into the vampire mythos to keep things fresh. But this show decided to invent a completely new category of vampire all together, which gives audiences new territory to explore.
What We Do In The Shadows is now streaming on Hulu.
