The Queen of the Damned

WARNING: This review is hidden because it reveals the content of the film.
Click here to show this review. “Queen of the Damned” might find itself an audience in 13-year-old wannabe Goths that think vampires are the coolest thing ever. For everyone else, it’s a mostly incomprehensible mess. The film begins with the vampire Lestat (Stuart Townsend) awakening from a hundred years of sleep. Falling in love with Heavy Metal Music, he becomes a world-famous musician. Part of their success is due to Lestat declaring himself a vampire to the world, something the other blood suckers are none too keen about. When Lestat’s music awakens Queen Akasha (Aaliyah), the mother of all vampires, her bloody reign of terror begins again. Meanwhile, paranormal researcher Jesse Reeves (Marguerite Moreau) has deciphered Lestat’s lyrics and discovered that he is indeed a real vampire. A love triangle between the two women and Lestat ensues.

Did you ever see that other film based on Anne Rice’s work, “Interview with the Vampire”? This may have led you to seek out this film and that path only leads to disappointment. The back of the DVD cover reads “Stuart Townsend portrays Lestat, the undead antihero previously seen in the movie version of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire”. It’s true that Stuart Townsend plays a character with the same name as Tom Cruise did in “Interview with the Vampire” but the characters couldn’t be more different. To start off, Lestat is shown waking up after a hundred years’ worth of sleep, which is inconsistent with the previous film. Here, Lestat is seen as a rebellious bad boy who loves music and openly defies vampire culture. It couldn’t be more different from the cruel, narcissistic nosferatu we saw in the previous film. Wasn’t he able to read minds in that other story too?

“Queen of the Damned” is wrought with problematic characters. Jesse Reeves, the paranormal researcher is essentially a fan of Anne Rice’s book tossed into the story. She just walks into a vampire bar unarmed, without informing anyone of where she is going and with only a name to defend herself. Lucky for her, Lestat just happens to be inside the vampire bar so she doesn’t get eaten and then what happens? Do we get a discussion between the two about how killing people in order to sustain your immortality is wrong? No. She informs Lestat that she wants to become a vampire too. And, of course, Lestat’s been around for hundreds of years, killing young women and draining them of their blood mercilessly but this one lady comes along and all of a sudden, she’s special. Give me a break.

As for Queen Akasha, she's a weak villain with vaguely established powers and absolutely no personality. She can fly, resist sunlight, make people burst into flames and has the amazing power of being able to teleport where it would be most dramatically convenient for her to appear.

This movie has got some serious double standards. Queen Akasha is said to be so terrible that she “drained the land dry” while ruling alongside her vampire husband. She’s bad because she has no inhibitions and is using her evil powers to mind control Lestat. But Lestat and the other vampires are not evil because you never see the people they kill, it’s only implied that the groupies Lestat’s manager brings to his room are drained of all life then disposed of in the desert like a mob hit.

“Queen of the Damned” is often laughably bad. Mostly it just feels like a silly fan-fiction of the vampire mythos. This may be where it finds its fanbase. Think about this, single moms and 13-year-old girls: it’s about a famous, rich music star with tons of money that kills women left and right until the one special girl comes along. When he falls in love with the richer, more powerful female vampire, our plain protagonist is the only one that can help him break the spell and ultimately, save not only her crush but all of humanity. No amount of shirtless Stuart Townsend can save “Queen of the Damned”. (On DVD, January 31, 2014)