Do Over: EYG Sunday Morning Revisit Week 6

When I first saw Interview with the Vampire, it was on a rental (probably VHS). I found it boring. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it was not what I was looking for at the time: a gothic horror period piece.

Today, for the Do Over, I watched Interview with the Vampire. It was one of the first films I thought of when coming up with concept. I would have done this earlier, but since I already had done Blade 2, I did not want to typecast the Do Over as a vampire topic.

According to IMDB: “Against the backdrop of a gloomy San Francisco, the nearly two-century-old vampire, Louis de Pointe du Lac [Brad Pitt], recounts the unbelievable story of his eternal transformation and a life worse than death to the sceptic reporter, Daniel Molloy [Christian Slater]. Spanning two hundred years of cruel betrayals, extreme solitude, and unquenched thirst, Louis’ grimly fascinating tale pivots around his perpetually regrettable decision to embrace the dictatorship of blood, and, above all, his maker: the seductive blonde aristocrat of death, Lestat de Lioncourt [Tom Cruise]. Is Louis’ mystical epic of bloodshed genuine? Is this, indeed, an interview with a vampire?”

The moody, atmospheric film is considerably more interesting to me today than when I saw it for the first time back in the 1990s. The film is much more a character piece than what I wanted back then, focusing on Lestat, Louis and Claudia (Kirsten Dunst). Claudia, in particular, was a fascinating character and Kirsten Dunst, without a doubt, gave one of the best performances of the movie. Such a young girl who was able to bring such menace and, dare I say, evil was revolutionary and amazingly believable. She showed how powerful of an actress she was going to become with this early performance.

The story itself was fine, though a little too strung together for my tastes. I did not enjoy the very last scene in the car because it made the entire film feel too cheesy. I did not find any of Interview with the Vampire to ever cross into camp until the very end, and that tonal switch felt like a betrayal to what had come before.

Both Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt were excellent in this movie as Louis spent his vampire existence longing for a change and Cruise wishing that he would just embrace what he was.

Based upon the book by Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire had a slow burn but it created an amazing atmosphere and built a sense of tension and suspense as these vampire characters tried to find answers for their unhappy existence.