Vamp Watch: Interview with the Vampire - The Vampire Chronicles (1994)

Watched:  10/22/2026

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Neil Jordan

Credit where it's due.  We don't get the last 30 years of vampire media without, first, Anne Rice's vampire novels and probably not without Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994).  It's also hard to explain what a huge deal Anne Rice was in an era of B. Dalton book stores and a lack of access to somewhat transgressive fiction for suburban kids.  You want quasi-queer fiction you can read at the lunch table?  This was it.  And, there is a line somewhere from Anne Rice's novels to Twilight to stuff like Vampire Academy and, absolutely, the current popularity of supernatural romance.  

I should be clear - I'm more of a Bela Lugosi / Nosferatu / Sinners / Near Dark kind of vampire guy.  I've never read any of Rice's books.  And in 1994, I took a pass on the movie in the theaters, in part because I was busy with college, and in part because I thought Tom Cruise was a chode who had weaseled his way into the movie.

I finally watched Interview with the Vampire on VHS by myself at some point shortly after it hit the Blockbuster - but I couldn't tell you when.  All I can tell you is that I was really, really bored.  

Well, I have news about re-watching this movie in 2026.

I was really, really bored.

At the time - much was made of the casting of this movie, especially casting Tom Cruise as Lestat.  My memory is that contemporary reviews were pretty nice about him, a sort of "well, it could have been way worse.  Nice job, Tom," thing.  He's...  fine?  I guess.  I don't know what else he's supposed to be like, but everyone is tripping over the stylized dialogue by Rice, who is credited as the film's screenwriter.  I think real-life Cruise seems far more dangerous than this Cruise, but whatever.

Brad Pitt seems to take "I'm a vampire" as "I'm a stiff, uninteresting guy" which is maybe sensible as his character's hallmark is that he's terrible at vampiring for most of the movie.  But does make the entire last quarter of the movie make less sense.  If Pitt is doing all of his work internally, it is locked up so tight, no air or light is escaping.

The breakout from the movie was Kirsten Dunst, who was already a powerhouse pint-sized actor.  It'd feel weirder, but I'd seen Anna Paquin in The Piano in 1993, so everything seemed possible.  I still like Dunst.  She's terrific in this, and she's A-list for her generation in my book.

We also get Stephen Rea when he was enjoying his fifteen minutes after The Crying Game, and Antonio Banderas in the thickest wig you will ever see - riding high on his mid-90's success.  He is, arguably, the best in the film.

Casting aside - the actual movie reminds me of the times where I've read the source material a movie is based on, and walk out completely satisfied, but for those without all the info at-hand from the novel are left wondering what the big deal was (I think reactions I saw to Project Hail Mary sometimes reflected that POV).  

Movies are both more and less than the printed page, but in adapting a book to the screen - *why* things are what they are can get lost.   Dropping the necessary detail can occur in the focus of the writing as some things are impractical for an audience with a 2 hour time limit, to what is shot and performed, to what gets edited into the final film - especially as movies rely much more on character emotions than plot mechanics and logistics.

I'll argue, Interview with the Vampire leaves way too much out that was necessary for the story to hold, and leaves behind a snooze fest of pouty vampires whining at each other for 2 hours.

Starting in then-contemporary 1994 San Francisco, the story takes place in flashback as Louis, our narrator, relates his story to a befuddled Christian Slater.  

For a movie about a literal interview with a vampire, I have zero idea how they got to this point.  Slater seems like a skeptical, cynical 90's-sort-of-guy.  Why is he in this apartment with a stranger interviewing him at all?   It feels like three minutes of this set up would have provided a lot more context.

Through Louis's narrative, this movie spends two hours acting like it's trying to tell you something, but after two hours, I'm kind of unclear as to what that would be.  An eternal life condemned to shadows being lonesome and sad gets covered in most romantic vampire fiction (see: many Draculas and Dark Shadows).  Mostly it seems like Louis' story creates the very specific world of vampires and the rules for those vampires, and then shows how those rules are bad, indeed, both in regards to biology and social norms for vampires (ie: we don't kill other vampires.  Why?  I need to know.)

But what it seems to want to dig into is the culture of the vampires, and seems to skim over the top there.  We definitely get why it's *bad* to turn children into vampires.  But the movie is also cowardly about what is clearly the erotic and sexual underpinnings of what Rice seems to care about.  Whether Louis and Lestat are having actual intercourse, or their sharing of blood replaces that urge, I can't say, but the family unit is clearly Lestat and Louis as a couple with Claudi (Dunst) as their child.  Very AO3.

Similarly, Armand's obsession with Louis (the last quarter bit I didn't buy) is clearly romantic in nature, but the movie just refuses to let two dudes be gay in 1994.  And the story makes the most sense if Rea's character is the lover who sees his partner's eye turning from him to something more exciting (and less goofy).

There's also the perversion of human morality, of course, that's given short shrift and never delved into.  Yes, we get a scene where Louis and Lestat have a catty fight over him not doing the deed.  But we get almost nothing regarding the lives they take, even how they rationalize it, or if the do or don't.  We get little about what they feel about what they did to Claudia, just sort of broad strokes about what it means she'll never grow up.  There's no commentary about what is witnessed in the Grand-Guignol (based on a real theater, btw), we just see it and Pitt blandly stares at it.  

It's a movie about Whoops! All Villains! so it's a matter of who is worse than whom, which in inherently interesting (to me), but all we talk about is how Louis is the Mary-Sue of vampires.

The movie also has some odd logical bits.  And that's fine - it is a movie about people who magically get good hair.  But, yeah, l didn't get how Lestat was decamping to 18th Century plantation country Louisiana, being weird as hell, and killing 2-3 people a day, and no one has figured it out?  That's a minimum of 700 people a year.  That's 60-90 in a month.  I won't even get into the practicalities of dealing with 90 bodies a month.

And, frankly, the end of the Paris sojourn can only be what it is because the vampires are written to be dumb as fuck.  You're going to kill someone's daughter and think because of some gentleman's agreement he's not going to come back and burn your place down?  Maybe humans don't do that, but vampires are out there popping off a person every time they get peckish.  I don't see them having a lot of qualms about bumping off one of their own.  Like, get some dogs or something to protect the place.

I guess the point of the movie by the end is that living forever by murder is bad and not worth it.  But I think that's more of a thirty second rhetorical query than a movie that spends two hours going in circles.

As I said, I was bored, mostly.  But I have to give props to Rice and the movie, because they really did a thing with this flick, and now we're drowning in pop vampire fiction.