From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a film review for you.
Today I'll be reviewing the movie Queen of the Damned released in 2002.
Starring:
Stuart Townsend, Marguerite Moreau, and Aaliyah
Directed by:
Michael Rymer
Genre:
Horror, Fantasy, Drama
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Rating:
R
Budget:
$35,000,000 (estimated)
Current IMDb Rating When Reviewed:
5.3
The Synopsis is:
The vampire Lestat becomes a rock star whose music awakens the queen of all vampires who wants to reign the earth again with him by her side.
Story:
American author of gothic fiction, erotic literature, and Christian literature, Howard Allen Frances O'Brien otherwise known as Anne Rice wrote the book, Interview with the Vampire published May 1976. The book was heavily influenced by Anne’s real life trauma of losing her young daughter Michele, nicknamed "Mouse" who died of acute granulocytic leukemia in 1972 shortly before she would have turned six.
She connected Michele’s blood affliction with vampirism which birthed a series of books, The Vampire Chronicles. It centered around the fictional character Lestat de Lioncourt, a French nobleman turned into a vampire in the 18th century.
The first book was poorly received. That is something I never understood because it’s an excellent book, but it was a decade ahead of its time.
Sure enough, nine years later she followed up the novel with The Vampire Lestat in 1985 which was a success and debuted at No. 9 on The New York Times Best Seller list and spent a total of six weeks on the list. The Vampire Lestat ended with a cliffhanger and demanded another book in the series.
In 1988 The Queen of the Damned was published and reached the #1 spot on The New York Times Best Seller list, staying on the list for more than four months. It was also a main selection of the Literary Guild of America for that year.
I remember working at a bookstore in the early 1990’s and Anne Rice’s books were a top seller for years and years. Many of the readers of the Queen of the Damned knew they had to read the first two books in order to understand the scope of the story, which each book wonderfully delivered. I was among those readers.
Anne built a whole new world of vampire lore to excite a growing vampire loving community of the late 80’s and 90’s.
With such a following, it was soon that Hollywood came knocking on Anne’s door in the form of Warner Brothers, to adapt her books.
The first to be adapted was Interview with the Vampire (1994) starring Tom Cruise as Lestat. At first, Anne and the fans of the series weren’t happy that Tom was casted, but with careful attention to makeup and Tom’s dedication to the role, he defined the role in a new way while honoring the written character. It was a success being the tenth-highest-grossing movie of 1994, earning two Oscar nominations so naturally a sequel was in the works… or was it?
Anne Rice wanted to be involved in any way possible to help bridge the gap between what her fans expect and what she wrote. This would have also excited the fans of her novels. She even offered to write a script for free, however, Warner Brothers ignored her and the property for years.
In a mad dash to use the property before the rights went back to Anne in the year 2000, in 1999 Scott Abbott and Michael Petroni were hired to write a screenplay. Australian filmmaker Michael Rymer was hired to direct.
Instead of tackling the direct sequel Scott Abbott had the idea to combine The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned, taking the connective tissue between the two books and discarding most of the rest. Seeing how problematic that would be, Rymer suggested that the project should be a miniseries, but it was shot down immediately.
As well, none of the actors returned from Interview with a Vampire and the overall look of the movie was drastically different.
With that as it was, the story is not perfect. The script in particular had some cringey moments that didn’t work. But on the other hand, it does have a few good unforgettable moments where it leaned more heavily on the source material and riffed off of that. That’s when the film is the most fun, when it is playing with those themes.
Pacing:
At one hour and 41 minutes it feels a bit too long in some parts and in other parts, one desires more time with the characters. Time management was a big issue for me when trying to figure out what didn’t quite work. There was a lot of time given to dead or dull concepts, but there were wonderful splashes of content that entertained me.
Challenge:
The challenge in this film starts out a bit ambiguous, being the ups and downs for Lestat being turned into a vampire and figuring out how to live as such. The film has a character by the name of Marius Lestat’s vampire maker for the convenience of keeping the story tight. In the book The Vampire Lestat, he was turned by a powerful 300 year old vampire by the name of Magnus. We’ll get back to Magnus later on in the review, but in the film Marius is Lestat’s teacher from which he learns the ways of the vampire and discovers the statues of the ancient vampires Enkil and Akasha, “The ones who must be kept”.
Akasha is the main challenge of the film but she’s hardly in it. The film spends a great deal of time setting us up for when she is finally awakened by Lestat’s music in the early 2000’s.
Sadly, it takes 51 minutes into the run time of the film to get there but once she appears the appeal of the character left an iconic imprint on audiences with only 26 minutes of screen time.
Let’s go over her backstory which I would have loved to have seen in the movie. Akasha was a queen 6,000 years before Egypt was established as a nation in a land called Kemet with her husband, King Enkil. The village of two powerful red haired twin witches (Maharet and Mekare) was destroyed. The twins were imprisoned by the royal couple and questioned about what they knew about the infinite. They refused. In anger they publicly violated and then abandoned in the desert.
The king and queen were then harassed by the bloodthirsty spirit, Amel. The king and queen were forced to summon the twins from the desert to exercise the spirit. During the exorcism assassins attacked Enkil and Akasha and as the queen was dying, Amel attaching himself to her soul and dragged it back into her body, wherein she became the first vampire. She then saved Enkil who was dying from his wounds by turning him into a vampire.
Akasha and Enkil lost their thirst for blood and eventually became living statues. However, the other vampires soon realized that the statues had to be looked after because what happens to them, happens to all vampires. Once upon a time, the statues were exposed to sunlight and most of the younger vampires died, but the older ones were hurt but survived.
Marius is the keeper of the statues in both the book and the movie. One day while Lestat was playing on his violin in Marius’ castle. He found the queen and played his violin for her. In return Akasha’s statue moves and offers him some of her ancient blood, thus increasing his strength.
What the book also included was that Enkil was not just a bystander. All of this activity woke him as well and he would have killed Lestat, if it weren’t for Marius saving him in the nick of time. I’m not sure why this wasn’t included in the movie, but that’s another exciting moment that would have been awesome to see on screen.
Out of fear and maybe even jealousy, Marius moved the statues to a new hidden location, abandoning Lestat. Centuries later, Lestat’s music woke Akasha once more. She turns into flesh after draining Enkil of blood, killing him and choosing Lestat to be her new companion.
Akasha’s appearance is the main event of the film, inserting it with excitement, mystery, danger and a boost of sensuality.
She goes searching for him where she senses a large gathering of vampires at The Admiral's Arms vampire bar in London. This is one my favorite locations in the film and I wish there were more scenes taken place there.
After discovering that the vampires plan to destroy Lestat, she destroys them like flies. The scene itself is so powerful as she wreaks havoc without much effort at all. She simply flicks her wrists and sets her targets on fire to demonstrate her place as queen of them all. It's an iconic scene that is framed with so much thrill!
The secondary challenge in the film are bands or covens of vampires that want to destroy Lestat for exposing the mortal world to the notion of vampires. They want to remain in the shadows to keep their hierarchy and advantage over mortals. Their threat is quite minimal in the film. It is more theatrical and serves as a way to demonstrate how powerful Lestat is that he can easily defeat most of them.
Empathy:
The empathy in this film doesn't really exist. It’s a weird thing to say, but it’s a movie about villains and maybe one or two innocent side characters, but even they don’t strum up much empathy.
Lestat is a character that is thoroughly adored by his portrayal in the books, which comes off a little differently in this movie. Much of that comes from the fact that Lestat looks nothing like how he is described in the books and in the Interview with a Vampire movie. Part of Lestat’s personality was wrapped up in his blonde locks. In fact, there’s this gory scene in the book which is another scene I would have loved to have seen in the film, where he wakes up in a crypt with hundreds of decomposing bodies of blonde blue-eyed guys that look just like him. That’s totally freaky. I wished that scene made it into the film.
This was also a big deal for Anne Rice too because Lestat was largely inspired by her husband, Stan Rice. They both have blond hair and they share the same birth date of November 7. As well, it was well known that the character was a combination of Stan and Anne Rice’s alter egos as well, so it was very personal to get Lestat correctly. This was where the film failed to really nail the character.
Lestat was chosen to become a vampire because of the way he looked and in his day, he had certain privileges because of the way he looked. One of the other motivations for being the man that he is in the books is because Magnus actually left Lestat to discover the ways of being a vampire on his own, which he is bitter about. It makes him cold underneath a playfully naughty jovial demeanor.
However, if you can imagine that this is a story not connected to the books, maybe this version of Lestat could work. Lestat in the film is a lot like a black panther prowling around in emo goth fashion. And you know what? I’m actually into it. I always loved that aesthetic and it’s the only reason why this works for me. He’s cold and bitter without the joviality. He’s depressed, but you don’t know why he’s moody with the off chance he’s flirty, or darting a smirk of superiority.
For this version of Lestat, the film sets up Lestat’s displeasure with living in the shadows when he becomes a vampire in the 1700’s. He encounters a violinist on a beach and as he joins her in play, his supernatural nature alerts her and her friend who freak out. Having to kill her, he becomes melancholy.
He so desperately wants to be adored by others and enjoy the pleasures of being worshiped for being a god-like being. Having to hide his identity to keep himself and other vampires safe from human discovery is what he hates the most and the reason why Akasha wants him. He shares her desire to live among humans.
Lestat was slumbering for decades after the events of Interview with a Vampire, until he hears the modern music of the early 2000’s which wakes him up. In the book it was 1984, so you get the idea that the music Anne Rice had in mind was different, of the big hair metal band variety, like Whitesnake, Vanhalen, Motley Crew, and Bon Jovi. However I actually enjoyed the era appropriate music, using gothic metal to match the aesthetic of the movie. It makes this film quite special.
Lestat embodies the mesmerizing flirtiness of a rock star into his stage performance, tapping into legendary rock gods like Jim Morrisson, lead singer for The Doors and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin. He’s the kind of guy everybody wants or wants to be like.
Lestat gets pushed to the supporting role when Akasha shows up at his concert in Death Valley and takes him to a resort where she has gone on a feeding frenzy. There she attempts to convince him to go along with her intentions to commit genocide and reboot society in order to rule over humans and vampires as a god.
I rather enjoyed the seduction of Lestat and technically, exerting his superiority over mortals would be totally up his alley. However, it says a lot about Akasha when even this version of Lestat, a cold blooded killer with little respect for human life shys away from Akasha’s insatiable thirst for blood. That just tickles me every time. She’s just that savage.
Lestat has a very interesting relationship with Marius, who acts as his teacher but there is a romantic tension that the film doesn’t quite explore.
What it does explore is a female love interest for Lestat by the name of a human named Jesse Reeves, a researcher for the Paranormal Studies Group, The Talamasca.
The character of Jesse is the audience’s avatar in the film. She is an outsider trying to breach her way into the vampire world. One cool story aspect concerning Jesse is that her mentor, David Talbot, gives her Lestat's journal to read and it allows the audience to glimpse into Lestat’s early days as a vampire. It’s one of the most enjoyable parts of the film and we get to see a glimmer of some of the Lestat that fans of the books are used to, as well as a brief interaction with Akasha as a statue.
Jesse is so obsessed with Lestat that she begs him to turn her into a vampire through most of their cringy interactions. It’s odd because it’s unusual for Lestat to spend time with humans, resisting the urge to kill them. What makes her so special? The film doesn’t answer that.
At one point in the film, she actually cuts herself to tempt him and I thought it was unintentionally funny because it plays a little to the overdone Hollywood storyline that a beautiful woman can tame any beast. It’s also strange because Lestat doesn’t actually have much interaction with Jesse in the books so all of this is contrived for the film.
This version of Lestat is also incredibly lonely. Although he has mastered his dream of living in the open, he is massively lonely. Among his wishes, he wants a companion, which is why he never forgets the violinist he met so long ago. Jesse offers herself as a companion to Lestat. Even Though I don’t quite buy the romance between Lestat and Jesse, I don’t mind it either in the context that Lestat can have a companion again.
There are so many other vampires in the film that are striking visually, but unfortunately we aren't introduced to them. They just stand around, but they look cool.
Of the ancient vampire twin witches, we are only introduced to Maharet, who acts as Jesse’s aunt, who protects her human family generation after generation. Maharet rounds up a band of vampires to stop Akasha’s plan. There is a cool but rather short confrontation; the vampires overpower Akasha by draining her blood. The person to drink her last drop of blood is Maharet who then turns to stone, replacing her as the new Queen of the Damned.
Again, the film changes the lore because the other twin, Mekare, is the twin that became the Queen of the damned by consuming Akasha's heart and brain. The film went a little soft when it came to a lot of the horror imagery that was baked into the books, but it got the gist of things that occurred… kinda.
Technical:
The production had its challenges to start out with, being nearly half of the budget of Interview With the Vampire at about $35 million. In order to save money, Michael Rymer convinced the studio to shoot the film in his home city of Melbourne from October 2000 to March 2001. A few scenes were also filmed in Los Angeles.
Originally the big concert was going to be in an old theater. Because of the wire work and pyrotechnics, the decision was made to have the concert in an open desert, inspired by Burning Man. Utilizing the thriving goth scene in Australia, over 3,000 to 5,000 extras were filmed at a quarry in Werribee to shoot the concert in Death Valley, California for 3 days. They were recruited from several bars and taken by bus to the location. It was a great idea to do this because it really gave the film a much more expensive look. It was pretty epic.
From death valley to London, I loved the jet setting globe trotting in the film. It may have been a distraction, but I also thought it brought something unique to the film.
The bar scenes were completely contrived for the film, which I enjoyed. "The Admiral's Arms" vampire bar "in the meatpacking district" of London pays homage to the night club "Mother" which was a real vampire bar in the meatpacking district of New York City.
The film excels when it comes to some of the costumes of the ancient vampires and the work that was done with Akasha’s costumes. The make up was a bit of a hit or miss. I didn’t mind it so much but many viewers complained that the makeup was not as good as it was in The Interview with a Vampire. They are right because that film took great care to create a special kind of look for the vampires, including visible veins.
The makeup wasn’t bad in my opinion although it was minimal. Again, the film had a smaller budget so something had to give. There was a great deal of digital manipulation to give all of the vampires a very surreal smooth complexion. Another place where you can see the budget were the many forms of Akasha as a statue, and her elaborate final death scene. I appreciate all of that work.
You would think that a vampire movie would be more bloody, but it was all used minimally as well. The “blood” that many of the vampires had in their mouths was cherry juice. I love that kind of simple hack to get the results needed for a scene.
The actress who played Akasha was Aaliyah who unfortunately died in a plane crash on August 25, 2001. She shot all of her scenes, but died only two days before the Monday morning she was supposed to record her ADR.
Her brother Rashad Hasan Haughton, who was very close to his sister and had a deeper, but similar voice, was asked to come in and do some of her ADR. They used her own voice from the set, double-tracked it and added some more special effects to make her voice sound supernatural. I loved the effect, because it has a very eerie echo to it. I thought it was well done, with what they had to work with. Good job!
One unique quality of the film was the awesome music selected for the soundtrack and score. Before the film had even had a cast, the studio and the producers wanted a heavy musical influence to coincide with the film. As luck would have it, Jonathan Davis, singer from the band Korn, was interested in getting into film scoring. He wrote 5 original songs for the film with composer Richard Gibbs and integrated them into the score.
Sony Records wouldn't allow Davis to sing on the soundtrack album release with Warner Bros. However, they did agree to allow him to sing in the movie so all of the songs had to be re-recorded and performed by other artists for the album release.
Jonathan Davis also made a small cameo in the film.
Performances:
Tom Cruise declined the chance to reprise his role as Lestat and I think with a lower budget and such different artistic choices from Interview with a Vampire, I can see why he didn’t do it.
Wes Bentley was first hired for the role of Lestat, but dropped out. Then Josh Hartnett, Ryan Reynolds and Heath Ledger were up for the role. Heath Ledger got really close to getting the part, but can you believe that the studio thought he wasn’t big enough of a star? He was just starting out at the time, but he of course would have been amazing.
At the time, Stuart Townsend was hired to be Aragorn in Lord of the Rings, however, he was let go the day before filming began because they wanted someone older to play the role. When he went for Lestat, he tested well and was well liked because of his affect on the ladies.
Townsend is actually pretty good in this, making the most of the script, which does have a few cringey lines. He makes it work and I think he was well aware of how his performance would be compared to Tom Cruise. He said that his version was “like the rock-and-roll, tongue-in-cheek version” of Lestat.
Intentionally, or maybe unintentionally, he was trying to get as far away from comparison as possible, including not having the blonde hair that the character should have. Granted, again, the budget for top notch make-up and wigs was not there as it was in the case of Tom Cruise who also has dark hair and eyes.
Stuart is so underrated as an actor and I think he gave a special kind of life and mystery with this new version of Lestat. He doesn’t get enough credit for this.
Cher was interested in the role and she was probably more in line with what Akasha was supposed to physically look like from the book. Cher is an academy award winning actress and has had hits in every decade since the 1960’s. You just can’t get anybody more queen-like for the role, but let’s consider the reasons why she might not work for this production, because it seems insane that they would not hire her on the spot.
First of all, there is the issue of cost, meeting her quality demands if she had any and the issue of quality of production and script, which had some issues in my opinion.
As well, with her natural authority in the business, they’d probably want an actress who was more of an ingenue they could experiment with and discover the character of Akasha together with.
The production decided to go with an African queen and so Halle Berry, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Williams, Jada Pinkett Smith, Vivica A. Fox, Samantha Mumba, and Jenna Dewan were popular actresses at the time. As chance would have it, Aaliyah was shooting Romeo Must Die for the studio and expressed a genuine interest in acting. They also loved the fact that she had box office draw based on her successful music career. She was also excited about the project because she was a fan of vampire fiction and Egyptian history.
Prior to shooting Michael Rymer had her learn a monolog from Oscar Wilde’s Salomé in an Egyptian accent. She won the part and she glowed on screen to the point that she stole the movie… Well she does play the titular character and I wish the film included more scenes for her to appear in. Besides the focus on Akasha’s seductive physical movements, her facial expressions had so much energy and intensity. She did a fantastic job and I wish we could have experienced more of her talent. She was definitely on her way up. It was rumored that she was going to be in the Matrix sequel. What a loss.
Many people wondered why Aaliyah had no songs in the movie. The filmmakers intended to have a duet between Aaliyah and Johnathan Davis around the last leg of the production, but she died before it could happen.
Michelle Williams was considered briefly for one of the roles but she was turned down, citing she was not good-looking enough. Wow! Michelle Williams is gorgeous. This is the kind of toxic infrastructure that permeated the entertainment business. This was not the first offense of its kind, nor the last.
Enjoyment:
When Aaliyah died, there was a lot of talk about not releasing the film due to the demands of fans. However, her family gave their blessing to move forward with the release because they cited that it was very important to her when she was alive.
So with permission, the film was released 6 months after her death and was dedicated to her memory.
The film made back its budget, but underperformed for what was expected. Many critics were not pleased that Aaliyah was so heavily used in the marketing but was hardly in the film. They tried to not market the film as a sequel to Interview with a Vampire, but Anne Rice was so well known, everyone expected more connection to the written work especially when using the title of one of her most profitable books.
I think those are all valid points that I actually agree with. Mistakes were made and I think The Vampire Chronicles need it’s own TV series with creators dedicated to Anne Rice’s vision as accurately as possible. I think that when artists see the opportunity to adapt something, there is a tendency to want to put one’s own mark on the thing and I think the challenge of ignoring ego and actually duplicating the story for the audience can be just as creative. It’s very challenging.
However, as its own thing, if we considered it an alternative universe version of Queen of the Damned it’s actually fun to me with lots of enjoyable elements sprinkled throughout the film. It’s an appetizer to what could have been. You look at this movie, knowing that everyone is giving their best and I had a lot of fun with it.
This is not Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned, but it’s my guilty pleasure!
My Rating:
7.8
That sums up my review. I hope you liked it.
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