I VANT TO SUCK YOUR BLOOD...AND BE IN YOUR MUSIC VEEDEO.
★★☆☆☆ (Don't Bother)
Director: Michael Rymer
2002
One of the most gruesome Hollywood stories is “Stuart Townsend and Lord of the Rings“. Before The Fellowship of the Ring filmed, Peter Jackson cast Townsend as Aragorn, but when production began, replaced him with Viggo Mortenson because he wanted someone more wisened. The rest is history. I always cringe when I think about those awful years for Townsend because not only could he not escape the success of LOTR, but during that time he went on to star in Queen of the Damned , a music video wrapped in a film that has so many missing scenes, your brain will eventually give up trying to make sense of it all.
The story takes place decades after Lestat (the anti-hero in Anne Rice’s vampire novels, including Interview with the Vampire) decided humans are too dull and got inside a mausoleum coffin for a long nap. But what’s this? The siren call of goth-rock? Lestat bursts from his tomb when he catches wind of a new type of music that sorely dates the film forever, and surprises this terrible garage band of pierced misfits by announcing he’s not only a vampire, but also their new lead singer. The script gets one thing right: Lestat has lived so long, he’s easily bored and craves novelty. So with that logic, music that sounds like a grown man pretending to be a dinosaur would probably appeal to him. Of course, now that he’s “out of the coffin”, he’s the target of other vampires who want their existence to remain a secret. Meanwhile, we have multiple subplots involving an attractive occultist named Jesse who wants to track down the lead singer of this hot new band, a kindly vampire family standing around in cloaks, flashbacks of Lestat wooing the titular vampire queen, and flashbacks of our hero as a young man, when he’s turned vampire by someone who’s an even bigger snob than he is.
There are so many problems with Queen of the Damned , but the only one I’ll mention is the script. Besides the awful dialogue, this is the Cliff’s Notes version of the novel. Interview with the Vampire was a pitch perfect adaptation that was careful not to confuse those who didn’t delve into the books, but for the Queen of the Damned film, the viewer will have to be familiar with many of Rice’s vampire novels to understand why certain things are happening, who all these people are, and why they do what they do. Lestat has eyes for Jesse because she read his journal? Queen Akasha has eyes for Lestat because he plays a mean fiddle? Jesse has eyes for Lestat because he berates her? And why did that vampire turn to stone?? Giant holes exist in place of missing scenes, but we do get unhelpful exposition dumps delivered in the most amateurish ways possible.
SPOILERS The movie culminates in a large-scale concert in the desert, a glorious scene where Lestat is attacked by evil vampires wearing dollar store capes; an overly choreographed fight that ends with Queen Akasha’s fiery arrival as she returns to claim Lestat as her lover so they can rule the world. I swear, the film is this close to being a guilty pleasure, which is why I can’t give it just one star. SPOILERS END
Townsend is no Tom Cruise, but he gives it his all, and for that, I tip my cap. He preens, he saunters, he seduces; he’s a whiny James Dean with eyeliner. Aaliyah is interesting as Queen Akasha, but she barely makes an appearance, only showing up to hiss and kill at the end. There are no stakes (ha) in Queen of the Damned , and you won't be scared unless your ears bleed when you hear Marilyn Manson—the movie is one big goth soundtrack. It’s not smart enough to be witty and not funny enough to be camp, and if you’re not pining for your salad days of dabbling in Satanism or black lipstick, its a slog to get through. Queen of the Damned is a poor man’s version of an Anne Rice adaptation, a movie drained of all common sense.
GENRES: Diverse Characters, LGBTQ+, Monster/Creature
NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this website's (nicolinatorres.com) blog posts or publications to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.