31 Days of Horror- Day 27: Interview with the Vampire (1994)

(dir. Neil Jordan)

Warner Bros.

A vampire details his decades spanning life story of loneliness, love, and dark urges to a curious reporter.

Interview with the Vampire has the dark, richly alluring mystique that the very best vampire films are composed of. There’s a bold theatricality to it, multiplied by delicious, scenery-chewing performances by Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise’s portrayals of Anne Rice’s famed Vampire Chronicles characters, Louis and Lestat. Despite the theatricality, and over-the-top moments, Interview with the Vampire takes itself seriously. Jordan approaches the vampire movie like a prestige picture, and carefully plots the course for these characters in a way that relies on genuine emotion, and thus illicits genuine emotion from the viewer. Within a wraparound set in 90s New York, Louis tells his story of how he was turned from a widowed plantation owner in New Orleans, to a vampire reluctant to shed himself of his humanity. Alongside his maker, Lestat, he forms a friendship and implied sexual relationship, that lasts for decades. But their relationship begins to wither upon their adoption of the eternally youthful vampire child, Claudia (Kirsten Dunst). What ensues is a battle of vampire morality as Lestat urges Claudia to give into her darker humanity, while Louis hopes to maintain her innocence, and thus his own.

There’s a sprawling mythology within the film, rules and sects, and worldly vampires like Armand (Antonio Banderas) who give this world the feeling of being lived in. What’s interesting is that although Louis is our lead, and the other vampires end up as antagonists of sorts, each of these characters could make for a worthy protagonist (and they have in Rice’s expansive series of novels). The film isn’t interested in these characters as archetypical villains, but real characters navigating the moral quandaries that living forever and living off other people entails. There’s a bitter loneliness in the questions that the vampires’ face, and the film never strays too far from that moroseness even in its moments of black levity. While the film excels on a level of pure entertainment (Pitt dispatching a theater company of vampires with a scythe), it’s the honesty internal struggle of these characters that makes Interview with the Vampire a classic of its kind.

Scare Factor: 2/5 More poetic and epic, in true novelistic fashion, than genuinely frightening, Interview with the Vampire still stands as one of our strongest vampire films. Compelling characterizations, lavish costume and productions designs, and unrestrained helpings of blood and gore, there’s a lot to love about Jordan’s first foray into the vampire subgenre. It’s a shame that Rice’s subsequent novels weren’t adapted with this cast. Pair it with Jordan’s 2012 vampire film, Byzantium, and you’ll find there’s still plenty of juice coursing through the veins of one of horrors most classic creatures.