Queen of the Damned (R) ★★½

Anne Rice's novel Queen of the Damned comes to the big screen where the ultra-cool but lonely vampire Lestat becomes a rock star and manages to awaken the most dangerous vampire of them all.

Story

The vampire Lestat de Lioncourt (Stuart Townsend) wakes from a hundred-year sleep to the rock 'n' roll present day and likes what he sees and hears. Tired of the vampire's solitary life, he becomes the frontman for an unknown rock band and transforms it into the latest greatest thing, gaining the adulation of millions. He also decides to disregard the unspoken rule that vampires must hide away from the rest of world and writes songs encoded with specifics of the secret life of vampires. As expected, Lestat's lyrics draw the attention of both the bloodsuckers who want to destroy him and the human vampire scholars (called the Talamasca) who want to study him. One young Talamascan student, Jesse Reeves (Marguerite Moreau), becomes obsessed with Lestat after reading his journal from the 1800s. She learns that Lestat had a brief encounter with Queen Akasha (Aaliyah), the most ancient and dangerous vampire to ever exist and the mother of all who walk the Earth in search of blood. He gets his chance to meet Akasha again when his music awakens her from an ancient slumber. She rises and seeks out Lestat to become her king and join her in ruling the world.

Acting

The film truly belongs to Townsend and fans of the Anne Rice's novels will be happy to know he completely embodies the charismatic vampire Lestat. The little-known Irish actor, who starred in last year's indie About Adam with Kate Hudson, rules the screen whenever he is on it, and luckily, he's on it quite a lot. He's especially powerful when he is in rock star mode. Although Moreau's Jesse is fairly one dimensional, she comes alive in her scenes with Townsend. Let's hope they keep asking him to play Lestat (when and if they make any more films from Rice's vampire novels), and next time give him an actress he can have some real chemistry with. The late R&B singer Aaliyah made her second film appearance in Damned as the queen. Even though she is only in the film a short time, she possesses a certain charm as the ancient and evil Queen Akasha and makes a great first impression by destroying a vampire coven. Yet, her acting skills are just not up to par with the rest of the cast, including the charismatic Vincent Perez as the vampire Marius and Lena Olin as the kind-hearted vampire Maharet.

Direction

Damned was set to be released in the fall of last year but word of mouth had the film destined for the video shelf before it even made it to the big screen. Then tragedy struck and as the news of Aaliyah's untimely death echoed throughout the world of entertainment, Warner Bros. wisely decided to hold onto it and release it in theaters at a more favorable time, knowing there would be an audience who'd want to see the singer's last film. Yet, for all the bad press surrounding it, Damned actually pleasantly surprises you, due largely in part to Townsend's mesmerizing performance. Michael Rymer's direction is not a masterpiece of filmmaking by any stretch of the imagination, but it has a certain MTV quality about it, which makes it appealing. That same quality, however, also makes it too slick, glossing over the meatier parts of Rice's novel, making the dialogue and action trite and sometimes downright silly. Come to think of it, the 1994 Interview With the Vampire also suffered from the same thing. Maybe translating Rice's words is harder than it looks.

Bottom Line

With a killer performance by its leading vampire and a last appearance by the late Aaliyah, Queen of the Damned should appeal to the music video generation and rake in some healthy box office numbers.