Review of Queen of the Damned

Queen of the Damned opens with a tedious monologue by the Vampire Lestat De Lioncourt (Stuart Townsend) who basically says that he has been asleep for 200 years because he is lonely. However, it appears that the present day interests him enough to awake and forge a career as a rock star. He has become highly successful and openly admits he is a Vampire to the press, although nobody seems to actually believe him. He lives off the blood of female groupies that his Manager Roger (Tiriel Mora) picks up and brings him. A woman named Jesse (Marguerite Moreau) who works for 'Talamasca Center for Paranormal Studies, London', listens to some of Lestat's lyrics and is convinced that he is a real Vampire because he talks of a pub called the 'Admiral Arms' and various other silly things. Jesse's friend and colleague David Talbot (Paul McGann) says that the organisation knows of Lestat and are already onto him. David gives Jesse Lestat's journal to read which chronicles Lestat's life, how he was turned into a Vampire by Marius De Romanus (Vincent Perez) and how he first came across the Queen of all Vampires, Akasha (Aaliyah) who was at the time some sort of weird statue. Jesse becomes obsessed with Lestat and heads to the 'Admiral Arms' in which she finds acts of Vampirism taking place. There she meets Lestat who lets her live. Lestat heads back to Los Angeles to prepare for a sell-out concert. Jesse follows him. It appears that most Vampires dislike Lestat for his high public profile, which is drawing unwanted attention to all Vampires and not just himself, and they want him dead. While in Los Angeles Lestat is contacted by Marius who he hasn't seen in nearly 200 years, he begins to fall for Jesse when they meet again and Akasha makes an appearance as she plans to wipe out the human race and rule the Earth with Lestat by her side as King and Queen! All this while trying to prepare for a big concert too! Will the Vampires successfully assassinate Lestat? Will Akasha wipe out the entire human race? Will Lestat turn Jesse into a Vampire and condemn her to eternal life as a blood-sucking Vampire? Who cares? Directed by Micheal Rymer I hated this film. This film isn't horror as far as I'm concerned. It's as much horror as a music video. The script by Scott Abbott and Micheal Petroni based on the Novels 'The Vampire Chronicles' by Anne Rice is an absolute mess. It tries to have various story lines going but forgets about them during the film, it also fails to juggle the various sub-plots so that I cared about or even remembered them. The flash back to Lestat's early years is almost redundant, Akasha's plan to take over the world isn't even mentioned until the last half an hour or so, Jesse at first is trying to track Lestat down as part of her job but that is also quickly ditched as she becomes the love interest, Lestat as a rock star is only really focused on during two scenes, there's a scene where Lestat and Akasha fly to an island and well, I'm not really sure as it's so choppy as to be almost incoherent and generally speaking there just isn't a single focused story going on. There is a typical Hollywood 'happy ending' that almost made me sick. It's really slow and boring too. There's no blood, gore, violence or Vampire action except a ripped out heart a bloodless decapitation and a couple of Vampire fights with awful CGI effects that are simply embarrassing to watch. Having said that I did like the way Akasha died, but it only lasts for about a minute so doesn't compensate for the lack of any decent horror throughout the rest of the film. The acting is poor and no one looks particularly interested, Aaliyah stands out as being as rotten and miscast as anyone else and she looks like she should still be in school! It's quite well made but for a film with a budget this big that's the least I expect. Just to round this terrible film of and add insult to injury is the soundtrack which features mind numbingly bad rock tracks throughout. I hate this film. Avoid if at all possible, you'll be glad you did.