A film review by Jorge Rodriguez Copyright © 2002 Jorge Rodriguez

Style, Style, Style! It’s what vampire films are all about. With the right director at the helm you could have a classic film, maybe about some teen vampire hunters in the 80’s, or perhaps a tale of a vampire's inner struggle with taking life, heck you could even go as far as making another incarnation of the Bram Stoker original. Now does "Queen of the Damned" have style? Sure it has plenty of style, most of it being placed in the rock star angle that the Vampire Lestat takes on in his second Hollywood incarnation. The bigger question in this case would be, was the rock star angle enough to save a film that was lacking in so many other places?

It really is hard to follow up a film, when you have none of the original cast, and not a trace of the original story to be seen. Which will be its downfall from the start, you have Stuart Townsend playing the role of Lestat this time around, filling the $20 million shoes of Mr. Tom Cruise. Fans of both film and book alike will notice right off that Townsend despite having the vampire look down quite well, has no attributes whatsoever commonly known in Lestat. He doesn’t have the golden locks of hair, instead he has a dirty blond look that looks almost black through the darkness of the film. He’s also a bit too innocent for the role, throughout the film he seems to be everyone’s bitch,
except to the lesser vampires who look like they all came out of a SlipKnoT concert.

Another aspect that will mortify the book reading crowd, is the severe changes made from the book. No doubt attributed to the fact that they combine two novels, "The Vampire Lestat" and "Queen of the Damned." The first change that almost made me walk out was the fact that Lestat’s maker has been changed for the studio's convenience no doubt. Instead of receiving his dark gifts from the little known Magnus, they have melded in his character with Marius, who was a mentor to Lestat later on in his years.

A lot of the other changes are mostly a fault in direction. They didn’t seem to want to delve into what makes these characters tick. Which is a shame considering Anne Rice has been developing the lives of these immortals for decades now. The director seemed to want to introduce every aspect in the story and get it over with as soon as possible. Even the title character is rushed. It’s a basic “she’s here, she’s evil, lets kill her”, and bickety bam, it’s over. Granted giving Aaliyah as little time on screen as possible was a good move. There are many aspects that were very rushed, and left me very dissatisfied.

Further into the direction you also begin to notice it lacks the mood that worked so well in "Interview with the Vampire." Visually it wasn’t impressive at all, even the special effect in the one big 30 second fight scene was plagued by horrible cuts into the crowd, and these terrible computer generated motion blurs. Let’s not forget all the oral prosthetics seem to have come from the early 1800’s. They seemed very unnatural, and filled the characters mouths in a way that just made it look like a B-Movie.

As for the acting, it was only as bad as the script. You know a film's in trouble, when you have Akasha Queen of all vampires, ancient Egyptian, spouting phrases like “We have a score to settle”. Hell and she’s the title character, so you can only guess the kind of B-Movie lines that the rest of the cast is spouting out. Overall, not even Stuart Townsend’s performance (while not up to par with Cruise was done was well as the script will allow) could not save the film.

The real honors of this film should be given to the lead singer of KoRn, who actually showed Townsend how to become a rock star. Not to mention lent his vocal talents for all the singing parts in the actual film. Sadly enough you won’t find him singing the songs on the soundtrack. He’s been replaced by a few familiar faces in the hard rock world. I guess I should also give credit to Aussie director Paul Goldman who directed the music videos for the fictional band. The direction in those videos was actually superb, and may be the only reason to pick up this DVD in the future. That is if they are smart enough to add the music videos into the DVD release. Overall you’re better off waiting for the DVD either way.

	Running Time: 101 Min | Rated: R | US Release: February 22nd | More >>

Related Links:

• Official Site
• AALIYAH.COM
• The QOTD Movie Cast Site
• The Official Anne Rice Web Site