What We Do in the Shadows has found an entirely new way to poke fun at vampires. Earlier in the same vein, such as Love at First Bite and Dracula: Dead and Loving It presented their vampires as out of touch clowns, rarely scary and often inept. What We Do In the Shadows kept the ineptness, but otherwise made them genuinely terrifying creatures of the night. It’s not that they’re bad at being vampires. It’s that being a vampire doesn't protect their dignity anymore than being human did. As a result, many of its jokes can be as terrifying as they are absurd coming at the expense of beings who, if circumstances were slightly different, would be the stuff of living nightmares.

That trend continued as the concept moved to television and culminated in what is perhaps What We Do in the Shadows' most singularly creepy being: the living doll imbued with Nadja’s soul. Evil dolls have always been good fodder for horror, but this one manages to be sympathetic without being any less terrifying. The showrunners established it in just the right way.

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nadja what we do in the shadows with doll

The doll is possessed by Nadja’s soul, which requires a bit of explanation. As vampires, most of the show’s principals no longer possess souls of their own. Their human souls passed on to the next plane when they became vampires. In Season 2, Episode 2, “Ghosts” the house became filled with restless spirits and the vampires decided to hold a séance to get rid of them. They ended up summoning their own ghosts in order to finish any unresolved business.

Unlike the other vampires, however, Nadja takes a liking to her ghost, and rather than send her to the next plane of existence, decides to let her stay for a while. At her urging, the spirit takes possession of a doll from the attic in order to disguise her presence from the other residents of the house. The doll remains, and the two form a bond over the remainder of the season.

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nadja and laszlo laughing together in what we do in the shadows

The humor is largely visual, based on the sheer absurdity of Nadja carrying on a perfectly normal conversation with a one-foot simulacrum of herself. It’s also a dig at her narcissism, as she clearly prefers her own company – literally – to that of anyone else in her unlife. And Nadja’s ghost doll has been a good friend, and even helped save the household in Season 2, Episode 10, “Nouveau Théâtre des Vampires” when she warns Guillermo about a trap for them.

Yet despite all that, her presence is supremely unsettling. The show uses the uncanny valley – the point when an artificial being becomes close enough to resemble a human, but whose minute differences evoke shuddering unease – to devastating effect. The doll's overt resemblance to Nadja herself adds to the discomfort, turning her every expression and nuance into something unnatural and wrong. But the piece de resistance is the way the other members of the household treat her very normally, as well as her way of just appearing and engaging in casual conversation at will.

The most striking thing about the doll is the effect she has on a show full of werewolves, witches and more overtly monstrous entities. None of them generate anything near the flesh-crawling effect that a comparatively simple and largely inoffensive puppet can. What We Do in the Shadows succeeds by displaying the humanity beneath its undead misfits, and that includes Nadja’s doll. But none of them hides their sweeter selves behind such active nightmare fuel the way she does.

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