Queen of the Damned (Double Sided) Buy This Original Movie Poster At AllPosters.com

Queen Of The Damned Review Directed By: Michael Rymer. Starring: Aaliyah, Stuart Townsend, Marguerite Moreau, Claudia Black and Vincent Perez.

Synopsis: An adaptation of Anne Rice's best-selling novel (and third in the Vampire Chronicles series), the supernatural adventure follows the legendary vampire Lestat (Stuart Townsend - originally played by Tom Cruise in the 1994 thriller Interview With A Vampire), who reinvents himself as a rock star in the contemporary American music scene. His music wakes Akasha (Aaliyah), the queen of all vampires, whose malevolent power is so great that all the immortal vampires must stand against her if they hope to survive. As Lestat's music inspires Akasha to make him her king, Jesse (Marguerite Moreau), a young woman with a fascination for the dark side, falls in love with Lestat.

I love the idea of a vampire waking up in modern society and finding out about the changes, about the nasty darker side of night life and being entranced by it. So entranced that he forms a rock group, starts playing seedy clubs and slowly becoming a hit. I love the idea of that, but in Queen of the Damned, Lestat wakes up, hears a goth band, and boom! Instant hit among the Marilyn Manson set.

Doesn't make sense. It doesn't. First off, once a man in that genre becomes too popular his fans turn on him, one need only look at the dwindling of Manson as an example although now he is being relatively ignored his true fans still flock to him, but the point is, they are a small and select group. In Queen of the Damned, everybody is Goth. Weird.

Problem Two. Anne Rice, according to the rules she has set up prior...no mirror reflections, no flying but the movie then breaks these rules. In fact the entire myth of Vampire Lore is destroyed here. Vampires come and go freely through people's doorways without waiting to be invited in, and the worst offence of all, photography, music videos, etc. These cameras work with tiny mirrors etc, to capture the image...Vampires cast no image in a mirror...I mean this was used in Interview With A Vampire...so what's the deal?

Sad. This is not a vampire flick. This is a wanna-be vampire flick that is more like a long, loud rock video more than anything else. Another problem was the switching of narration. Who is telling this story? We start with a very campy Lestat (Stuart Townsend) sounding a lot like Tim Curry in The Rocky Horror Picture Show before switching over the equally inane and totally under developed character Jessie (Marguerite Moreau). Fortunately for us Townsend soon loses the drawling sappy sounding Lestat and in some scenes comes off as very nasty while others he seems less like a sexy, blood and rock 'n' roll guy than a slow-moving, pretentious goon. It's a fine line to walk I suppose.

I haven't read the book. I can admit that. I honestly believe a movie should be able to tell the story to an audience that hasn't read it and still make sense. Queen of the Damned on a whole doesn't make sense...scenes go on way to long, others are pointless...for example, Lestat says to Jessie, you want to see how vampires live? Zoom. We fly over to the observatory where they have a brief chat. Why, other than an interesting visual, did this chat have to take place on the ledge of a window at the observatory? It could have taken place anywhere at all! They could have stayed right where they are! The answer is, the dialogue is lame and perhaps the visuals will boost it up a bit.

Finally, Aaliyah. Well, one should never speak ill of the dead I was always told, and fortunately I don't have to. She is not brilliant in this film, she has very little screen time but surprisingly, she could be downright nasty when the moment called for it.
I don't know about you but I always find a movie (or album) released after the death of a star, especially so young, a bit creepy. This one holds a strong morbid fascination, much along the lines of Brandon Lee's The Crow when it came out back in 1994.

Final tally on this one? A measly 1.5 stars out of five. A major disappointment in Vampire films and I give the half star for the Nosferatu like opening credits. As a rock video it is a pretty good time, but as a movie? Puh-lease...Still, I have hope. Blade 2: Bloodhunt is opening soon and perhaps they can still salvage something from the realm of the vampire.

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