Supporting Victim: Heather Richter
Despite numerous warnings, both standard (we were warned that the book was bad and Rotten Tomatoes only rated it as 19% Fresh) and supernatural (a
dog was barking precisely at 2:23 am on the night of a quarter moon rising in the constellation of Capricorn) we went to see Queen of the Damned.
No evil spells were involved; we went on purpose, knowing it was going to be bad (there is a story explaining why but it doesn't really belong in
this review). Surprisingly enough, somewhere in that 100 minutes was an almost watchable movie. Unfortunately, the divinely-inspired editor that
saved The Crow from a direct-to-video death was not consulted here. What we have left are some fairly decent heavy metal bits and videos sandwiched
somewhere within a schizophrenic and disjointed story.
After some opening credits pretending to be the reason for the accompanying music video, the Vampire Lestat (Stuart Townsend) begins
narrating his story, much like he does in the Anne Rice novels. Bored of immortal life a century ago, he had decided to sleep until he was awakened
by an unfamiliar sound. It turns out that the sound was a Goth band practicing loud enough to wake the dead. After an impromptu audition, a
demonstration of vampiric powers, and a promise not to eat the band, Lestat becomes the lead singer for a band that advertises itself as the
only band with a real vampire as the lead singer. They hit it platinum-big and the vampire world is now after Lestat for giving up the
fact that vampires exist. After some scene twiddling, we now skip to the other major character - Jesse Reeves (Marguerite Moreau) - a junior member
of Ye Olde Secret League of Occult Scholars that call themselves the Talamascans. She believes Lestat to be a real vampire and is determined
to track him down despite the objections of her mentor. We are then taken on a *really* divergent flashback worthy of the more painful stories of
the Arabian Nights where it's revealed how Lestat was created by Marius (Vincent Perez) who's responsible for guarding the body of Queen Akasha
(Aaliyah), first of the vampires. A messy incident involving a soulful gypsy violin, a secret door, and a bunch of flamethrowers happens that
results in Lestat and Marius parting ways over Akasha.
The movie just gets more tortured and convoluted from here on out. The vampire community, pissed at having been outed by Lestat, wants to kill
him a lot. Marius warns that if Queen Akasha comes back to life (and she does - surprise surprise) then both the immortal and mortal world will
suffer terribly. Jess has a thing for vampires and especially Lestat so there's a clumsy love story in the middle. Then Jess's long-lost vampire
family pops up out of nowhere. And so on. The story's a really big mess and doesn't get any better as the movie wears on. There are certain
directors that have the gift of being able to weave all of these cohesive subplots into a complete tapestry that's pleasing to look at. There are
others who keep the audience off-balance, revealing all the interconnections at the end in a stunning climax. Michael Rymer is
neither type of director and should have probably stuck to directing rock videos or whatever he did before he picked up the political
and financial connections that gave him this job.
But there are one or two good points. Visually, the movie is great. There are some nice sets, great costumes, and some very archetypal
vampires here. The music, if you like the genre, is fairly decent. The casting is good. Townsend does make a very menacing and darkly handsome
Lestat. Aaliyah was visually convincing as an evil Queen of the Damned but was vocally unconvincing as an ancient Egyptian. The vampire combat
which gave the movie its R rating was almost believable and almost interesting to watch.
The acting is mediocre to terrible. A lot of it is the fault of the dialogue. For example, the scene where Lestat meets Akasha for the first
time will not be remembered for its clever repartee. In general, the actors weren't given much room or time to work. But acting aside, the
main problem with the movie is that it has no sense of flow or narrative. Scenes jump all over the place and from character to character. The
digression into Lestat's past took us too long out of the present and might have been better at the beginning of the movie. The characters are
never really given time to develop. We only get to know them because of what they say or do in reaction to something. When we finally arrive at
the final confrontation, the outcome is not only unsurprising but a bit mundane. There's no sense of tension here because we haven't been given
time to care one way or another about either the human or the vampire world. This is a movie where good intentions were simply not enough to
overcome a fundamental lack of skill and vision.
We give Queen of the Damned a 3 out of 10 on the Good Movie Scale and a 6 out of 10 on the Bad Movie Scale. Queen of the Damned, while not miserably bad or tediously mediocre, does have its moments but not enough of them to recommend to your average movie goer. If you love vampire movies, you might as well see this one. No vampire myths, ancient or modern, were harmed or ridiculed in the making of this movie and the vampiric special effects are not bad. If you have the gift of being able to edit scenes and dialogue in your head and have access to paranormal levels of creativity, you might be able to envision a better movie after seeing it. For the normal human beings out there, we recommend waiting for it to go to video, Cinemax, or the Fox channel.
Our Drive-In
Totals:
0 Breasts
52 Dead Bodies
37 Undead Bodies
11 Flaming and Disintegrating Bodies
Breast Feeding
British Take-Out - Bangers, Mashed
2 Crypt Roaches
Mortal Beloved
Immortal Beloved
Talamascan Powerpoint Presentation
Vampire Coming Out Concert
Dueling Fiddles
Bleeding Heart Vamp
Family Tree
Vampire Epilepsy-Inducing Love Montage
Religious Discrimination
3 Embedded Rock Videos
Ancient Vampire Manor in Mojave Desert
1 bad Jamaican..err...Ancient Egyptian accent
Ye Olde Center for Paranormal Studies
Ye Olde Secret Guild of Occult Scholars
Ye Olde Socratic Dialogue by Echo
Ye Olde Secret Door in Creaky Castle
5 High-Speed Desert fly-bys
Almost Good to the Last Drop
Vampire Goth Band
Kung Fu
Fang Fu
Knife Fu
Pin Fu
Microphone Stand Fu
Spontaneous Combustion Fu
K'undulation Fu
Good Movie Scale: 3 out of 10
Bad Movie Scale: 6 out of 10
