Interview with the Vampire: 31 Days of Horror
For all of October, we will review horror films. Submit your requests here, and you may see your picks selected!
I won’t pretend that I am a big fan of Anne Rice’s original novel Interview with the Vampire, but I will say that so much of the film adaptation feels like a misunderstanding of what Rice was going for. Famously (initially) displeased with the process of how this film was made (including the casting of Tom Cruise as lead vampire Lestat de Lioncourt), Rice eventually accepted the film as a worthy interpretation. I don’t feel quite the same way. The original novel feels like a confessional, including the transformation of one into a vampire, and even some queer subtext that frankly weren’t being included in horror novels around this time (not to my knowledge). It was much more than a period piece with vampires and other goth elements. Again, I’m far from a worshipper of this book: I merely read it in university. I still found it indulgent and a little glacial, but Rice’s original novel felt invested in all of the parts of this experience, for better or for worse.
Then, there’s Neil Jordan’s version, which takes all of the flaws of the novel and makes them worse. This means more lethargy, much to my chagrin. Then, there’s the fixation with the mood and style of the film over the actual, real narrative passion that’s running through Rice’s text (even though she wrote the screenplay for this film). The film is all show, and very little actual life, and I don’t mean in a neat gothic way (like, say, Nosferatu the Vampyre). If the film is meant to feel romanticized, it had to do a little bit more in that nature. It can’t be both frigid (vampire style) and zealous (which it tries to pull off with its small bouts of horrifying imagery). It’s like all of the Twilight problems, but with an actual attempt to be creepy as well, and not just dumbed down for youths to swoon over. Interview with the Vampire is much less romantic, but the film still feels schlocky like a bad romance.
Lestat and Louis posing for GQ.
Look. Interview with the Vampire is well made when it comes to what we see in front of the camera: outfits, makeup, sets, that sort of thing. The cast may not have been ideal to what Rice had intended, and I don’t think anyone is really a slam dunk (outside of Kirsten Dunst, getting a jumpstart as an actress in this early child role as young Claudia), but everyone is clearly trying their best, despite their misguided attempts. If anything — and this is the part that feels extra insulting — the film almost feels like a means of pitting Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt together in something that would sell a lot of tickets. Put them in a gothic horror adaptation of a book that has a huge following, keep some of the sexual tension, and voila! You have a box office hit. Unfortunately, that just isn’t how films should be made. The film is the recounting of memories told in the present day, and the premise of listening to the histories of a unique being (like a vampire) seems like it would be interesting, but this film just misses the mark enough that I can’t make belief that it’s exciting. It looks nice and carries a fairly nice aura to it, but Interview with the Vampire is just boring. When you try to mix gothic coldness with schmaltzy hotness, you get a lukewarm, microwaved mess.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.