Interview with the Vampire

Interview with the Vampire; horror drama, USA, 1994; D: Neil Jordan, S: Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Kirsten Dunst, Christian Slater, Antonio Banderas, Stephen Rea, Thandie Newton

New York, 20th Century. A reporter is interviewing a certain Louis who claims to be a vampire. He tells him about his life: in 1791, Louis was a plantation owner who was suicidal after the death of his family, but was given two options by vampire Lestat: either to die or to live on as a vampire. Louis chose the latter but had to adapt to avoid the Sun and to drink blood from mice. Lestat once made a vampire out of a little girl, Claudia, which angered her since she could never grow into a woman. They moved to Europe and then the US. There she was killed by Armano, causing a revenge by Lestat. In the present, the reporter runs away in his car, but is bitten by Lestat.

In the light of constant (over)-popularity of vampires with the cinema goers, Neil Jordan's adaptation of the novel with the same title by Anne Rice, "Interview with the Vampire", actually secured itself a longer memorability than some of his better films, since it is an interesting and polished, but slightly pompous and too serious horror drama that does not distinguish itself that much from the your run-of-the-mill vampire movie. The sole concept where the main story is framed by the reporter interviewing a vampire in the exposition and conclusion is stimulative, taking on the form of a "dissident confession" and assuring deeper psychology and tragedy of the main protagonist, avoiding to larger extent the monster portrait for a more 'human' one, almost existentialist one. A few chapters are genuinely clever assembled, with a few sharp details (such as when Louis narrates how he saw the Sun rising for the first time in 200 years after watching movies in cinema) and Tom Cruise is not at all bad as vampire Lestat, yet the supporting character of the little girl, Claudia, is pointless whereas the story is overburdened with the "inflation" of dialogues, resulting in babble. The nihilism was intended in the story, yet in the end it turned pointless itself, which is why the ending was swift, but welcomed.

Grade:++