Friday, October 05, 2007

Interview with the Vampire


** (1994)

I can barely stand to write a plot synopsis, I was so disappointed in this movie. I'll keep it short and bitter.

Vampire Brad Pitt tells his undead story to interviewer/writer Christian Slater (thus the title). This particular vampire (unlike most) is full of conflict about needing to cause suffering to survive. Vampire has "family" (Tom Cruise and Kirsten Dunst) whom he loves, though they don't share his scrupulosity. Vamp family fights, vamp family disintegrates, vampire Louis travels and whines for another hundred years or so. At end of movie Christian Slater wants to become a vampire, thus proving he doesn't get what Brad Pitt has been saying all along. Yawn.

I like the Anne Rice book, she wrote the screenplay, the director is good, reviews were generally good (several academy award nominations), the acting talent is good (or at least good eye candy)- so why was I so bored? Why did I find the movie shallow and silly? There was a lot of homoeroticism which shouldn't count for or against the movie, except it was sometimes distracting. The actual vamping scenes provided no scares, no chills, no real horror. The blood didn't look like blood. On the positive side, the costumes were great and child-at-the-time Kirsten Dunst's acting was really good. There was also 1 scene with full frontal.

It's one thing to watch a crappy movie knowing it's going to be crappy. It feels worse to watch a crappy movie that should have been good.

4 comments:

Octopunk said...

Props to AC for playing the full frontal card! I also thought that scene was the most effective of the movie, with all those mod costumed vampires descending like a pack of rats. Total blandwich, though.

DKC said...

I nominate blandwich as the first catch phrase of "Thon07!

Cracks me up every time.

JPX said...

I found this film painful to sit through and it put me off from ever reading any of the books. It's as if she took the film Dracula, took out all the cool elements, and left everyone just sitting around a tea party.

DKC said...

I read almost all of the books when they first started coming out and liked them at the time. Years later I picked one up again and found it really boring. She goes into sooooo much detail it's exhausting. Total blandwich.

Malevolent

 2018  ***1/2 It's 1986 for some reason, and a team of paranormal investigators are making a big name for themselves all over Scotland. ...