Horror Movie Review: Queen Of The Damned (2002)

A fan of Interview with the vampire and/or the Anne Rice Vampire Chronices books? …Well then, this movie probably isn’t for you.

Queen Of The Damned is an adaption of Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles series. It’s mainly based on The Queen Of The Damned book but has elements of the previous book The Vampire Lestat.

Lestat de Lionscourt (Stuart Townsend) has slept for two centuries, while above his tomb the world has changed significantly from the 18^th century. He’s awoken by the sound of music, after rising from his resting place, he approaches the source of the disturbance and finds that it’s delightfully coming from his old house. He finds a bunch of young mortals and shows them his talents, together they become exceedingly famous as the band The Vampire Lestat.

A young member of the secret vampire expert society is intrigued by Lestat and reads through a diary her boss, David has found. She discovers his maker, the talented painter Marius (Vincent Perez) who kidnapped him from his homeland, so he would have a link to the outside world. Lestat wishes to remain seen and in contact with mortals, and in turn ends up being more trouble than he’s worth.

Lestat discovers Queen Akasha in a secret room inside Marius’ house. He plays the violin for her, and falls into her trap of drinking her blood. But he is chained to the bed by Marius and discovers that Akasha and her King are the makers of all vampires, brutal and bloodthirsty, they had drank the ancient world dry and finally lost their will to drink. Later, they discover Akasha has awoken and drunk her King to death and is now in search of a new King, and the vampire Lestat.

Now, I have several big problems with this movie. For starters, the merging of the two books – I heard that Warner bros were running out of time on their contract and soon wouldn’t have the rights to Anne Rice’s books so they thought, fuck it and put both the stories together. This in itself pisses me off because The Vampire Lestat (book) is Lestat’s origin story and explains why he is the way he is and has some really good scenes that are my favourite in the series. Secondly, if the script had actually been good then Tom Cruise would have returned to be Lestat, but clearly even he thought it was bad and Stuart Townsend just looks wrong. I just don’t believe that Lestat character could suddenly be an upper-class 18^th century snob to then become an emo rock singer in a band, it makes zero sense to me. That of course is actually in the books and is Anne Rice’s fault and although I think the whole “Lestat in a rock band” idea is stupid, if the adaption had been done correctly then maybe it wouldn’t have looked so ridiculous. In my opinion, I think if the original Tom Cruise Lestat was to see Stuart Townsend’s Lestat he would feel ill.

Another problem I had was the effects of how the vampires moved, I know the movie probably had a low budget but the effects looked cheap and made the vampires look funny. Also, the character Armand is included and he looks absolutely nothing like the original, he’s not even the same ethnicity.

I feel as if this movie wasn’t made as a sequel to Interview With The Vampire, it’s like it’s made for someone who knows nothing about the previous movie or any of the books or characters. But then it begs the question, why make it at all? To me, it just makes me feel the way Twilight movies do, which is uncomfortable, nauseous and disheartened. You know your movie is a bad adaption when the author rejects even being associated with it.