Queen Of The Damned.
Vampires, aye? Those pointy teethed fools that pop up all over our cinema’s nearly every year and frankly, is anyone else getting tired of them? Of course you can separate vampire movies into two categories. There are vampire movies that are rubbish pieces of cinematic tripe aka Twilight. Then there are vampire movies with, excuse the pun, a little more bite such as Interview with the Vampire. However, interestingly, Interview with the Vampire is not the movie we are talking. Oh no, we are talking about vamped up, soap opera sequel Queen of the Damned that somehow combines both the rubbish and greatness of our vampire lust.
(Any excuse to put sexy people in as little clothes as possible.)
Queen of the Damned starts by our favourite antagonist vampire Lestat (Stuart Townsend). After year of slumber, Lestat is awoken from years of slumber by the sound of a metal band. Yes, that is how this movie begins, a cursed damned man is awoken by Slipknot . Well, they say metal is evil. Anyway, Lestat, intrigued by this music suddenly works his way up to lead singer and tours the country as a famed and loved artist. He is soon followed around by Jesse who is a paranormal activity who believes he is a vampire, naturally. However, his music awakes an ancient Queen Akasha (Aaliyah) and a whole lot of trouble. Uh – oh.
Why is it bad?
(This looks more like a teenage Halloween party than a serious film.)
Ok, it is really hard to make a successful vampire movie that has depth, character development and an interesting storyline. Vampire movies are usually one dimensional farces that either have forbidden love, vampires who don’t want to kill and a human always gets involved somewhere. Occasionally, you get a great one such as Blade or Let The Right One In (Swedish version) but usually, they are bland and crap.
And this is not only a vampire movie, whose foundations are unstable at best, this is a sequel. Sequels are never good as the original unless you’re Pixar or something. Based on the books The Vampire Lestat, Queen of the Damned omitted key chunks of the series to make Lestat the main character despite the whole back story of Akasha being vital to the plot. Of course, having a charismatic character such as Lestat it would be foolish to actually give a damn about the juicy story in favour for a one dimensional character. Despite Anne Rice (author of the books) saying openly that the book would work best as a series due to its episodic quality, Warner Brothers went ahead and ignored any advice to create this movie. A movie that Rice has openly said “mutilated her work.”
And don’t forget the actor change from world famous Tom Cruise
(Sexy well known actor...)
to unknown Stuart Townsend.
(Sexy pre pubescent looking actor.)
Why is it good?
(She had great big pointy teeth.)
Because it is unashamed cheese. Yes, yes all the points above are applicable but Queen of the Damned doesn’t apologise because it is fully aware that it is a yarn. It is a movie that doesn’t actually care (right from word dot) because it knows that people who are particular fans of the genre would eat it up. It is vampires on steroids. Over the top acting make this romp enjoyable. It's vampires vamped up. If it were, like Twilight, to take itself so seriously it would end up so bad that we would dismiss it. Instead, we love it because the essence of the ridiculous is harnessed and used. Stuart Townsend is mighty fine as the vampire turned singer Lestat and Aaliyah works well as Akasha.
Vampires will always have this mesmerising hold over cinema goers because they represent our passion for the supernatural…..the sexy supernatural.
TTFN
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