Despite Coppola’s Dracula film being one of my all time favourites, I really have no idea why I never checked out Interview with the Vampire until just now, and even so only because my two mates wanted to watch it, despite being made to emulate the former’s success. 

I don’t know if it’s because I’m old now, I’m just too conditioned by certain kinds of narratives or maybe I’m just too beaten down by the shit I’ve seen in real life but while I definitely see this as a well made, well written and superbly acted film it just didn’t grab me. I definitely respect the craft and intentions, I was just exhausted by the end of it. 

It’s the Hannibal Season 3 syndrome of the entire story and every point of view within that story being so sociopathic that I ended up mentally checking out when the 500th terrified innocent person begging for their lives was sadistically toyed with and then drained of all their blood to satiate all the major characters. 

But I don’t want to feel like I’m grandstanding over this film. It’s a lavish, decadent, gothic opera with an otherworldly score by Elliot Goldenthal (who needs to come back to feature films) and just absolutely transportation in its world.

The performances are fantastic. Particularly Cruise who is absolutely relishing going against type as a creature of pure excess and degeneracy. Despite the homoerotic text of the story I’m now fully convinced Cruise is ace as Lestat doesn’t exude the sexuality I’ve imagined through the second hand osmosis I’ve absorbed of the story. I get the sense Cruise’s Lestat was a genuinely evil man who is using the curse of vampirism to finally live out his sadism.

Pitt is the weaker of the two, his character mostly just broods and ends up taking the nagging mother role of the found family. It definitely pays off in the third act where he takes a sense of agency in his life but it means he spends most of the film letting Cruise own the screen. Kirsten Dunst does an insane job as her permanently 11 year old vampire and the fucked upedness that comes from being 11 for 200 years.

I wish I liked this more but maybe it’ll grow on me in time.