director
Michael Rymer
screenwriters
Scott Abbott
Michael Petroni
based on
the books of
Anne Rice
producer
Jorge Saralegui
cinematographer
Ian Baker
music
Jonathan Davis
Richard Gibbs
editor
Dany Cooper
cast
Stuart Townsend (Lestat)
Aaliyah (Queen Akasha)
Vincent Perez (Marius)
Marguerite Moreau (Jesse)
Paul McGann (David)
Lena Olin (Maharet)
Christian Manon (Mael)
Claudia Black (Pandora)
Bruce Spence (Khayman)
Matthew Newton (Armand)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 101m
u.s.
release: February 22,
2002
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
see also:
- interview
with the vampire
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They've gotten it all wrong.
A vampire movie is supposed to be either great, or so ludicrously
terrible you spend half an hour out in the parking lot laughing
at it with friends; either way, it's supposed to be fun.
Those responsible for Queen of the Damned, which throws
together two of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles books (The
Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned), seem
to have forgotten that. Certainly the movie isn't good, but since
it was headed for mediocrity the minute Warner Bros. greenlighted
the script (by Scott Abbott and Michael Petroni), couldn't they
have tossed in some flamboyantly stupid moments? Just for me?
The movie takes itself with
the grim seriousness of a bad rock video; it's too dull and grinding
to be any fun to laugh at. A pall hangs over the proceedings
anyway, since this is the well-publicized last appearance of
the singer Aaliyah, who died last year in a plane crash. Aaliyah
plays the titular vamp, Queen Akasha, who used to reign over
the vampire race and now wants to spend eternity with the rakish
bloodsucker Lestat (Stuart Townsend) at her side. How is Aaliyah?
Her line readings are hard to judge (she's been dubbed and sub-woofed
a lot), but she seems to be having a good time hissing, slinking
about, and making disobedient vampires go poof in balls
of flame and dust. Whatever life there is to the movie is what
she brings to it; she had star presence, and her eagerness to
play a glamorous villain in a big-budget horror movie gives her
scenes a lift the film sorely needs.
Put Aaliyah next to Stuart
Townsend and he looks twice as bad as he does otherwise. Townsend's
Lestat is supposed to be a rock star -- a goth-grunge-metal icon,
with music and singing voice helpfully provided by Jonathan Davis
of the band Korn -- but Townsend comes off more like the kind
of high-school kid who gets beat up a lot. Queen of the Damned
veers closest to the hilarious when it's trying to sell us this
guy as some sort of dark undead Svengali. Unfortunately, Lestat
is who we're stuck with for most of the movie, occasionally trailed
by a vampire-huntress with obscure motives (Marguerite Moreau,
in an awful performance) and by Marius (Vincent Perez), the vampire
who "made" Lestat centuries ago.
Lestat issues an open challenge
to his vampire brothers and sisters to come and get him, an apparently
suicidal agenda (he's tired of spending eternity alone) that
results in a bunch of them attacking him onstage at a big concert.
The hardcore, eyebrow-pierced audience is horrified when Lestat
flits around slaying his own kind in self-defense; if director
Michael Rymer (another rock-video veteran) had any wit, he'd
have had the audience go nuts, thinking it was all part of the
show. The movie doesn't tell us whether the crowd demands its
money back after Lestat is whisked away by Akasha; after all,
he barely gets through one song.
Queen of the Damned obviously isn't for Anne Rice devotees;
it gives us blink-and-you-miss-them appearances by the vampires
Armand and Pandora (who each later got their own books), without
explaining who they are -- they're just vampire furniture. The
humans, in turn, are human furniture -- I was dismayed to see
Paul McGann, forever cool in my book for being the "I"
in the British classic Withnail & I, reduced to a
Basil Exposition role as a studious type who gives the vampire-huntress
much-needed tips (hell, just throw some tweed on him and call
him Giles). It's not much for vampire fans, either (they're all
waiting for Blade
II), and it's not really for Aaliyah fans (she doesn't
turn up until about the halfway mark). Who's it for, then? Whoever
happens to wander into the theater with nothing better to do
with the afternoon? It was rumored (falsely, claimed the studio)
that Queen of the Damned had been consigned to a direct-to-video
fate, and that only Aaliyah's death helped avert that fate. Whatever
the truth, this is the kind of disposable, watch-it-while-doing-household-chores
film that was made for video.
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