INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE. Directed by Neil Jordan; written by Anne Rice; produced by Stephen Woolley and David Geffen for Warner Bros. Starring Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Kirsten Dunst. Rated R (a lot of violence, some foul language and nudity)
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I used to think that "horror movie" and "scary movie" meant the same thing. But that was before I saw Interview with the Vampire.
It's horrible, all right, to the point of appetite suppression, but it's not really scary, except in a couple of places. That's just one of the movie's many problems, but even given its considerable faults, it is undeniably compelling entertainment, thanks mainly to the consistently eerie mood that its always-nighttime scenes create.
Contrary to some pre-release publicity, Cruise's casting as the renegade vampire Lestat is definitely not one of those problems. He's convincingly sinister, with just an edge of playfulness, handling the contradictions of his character quite well, even though the script doesn't always let us in on the joke.
Pitt plays the audience-identification figure, the interviewed vampire Louis. His continual soul-searching (can you say that about vampires?) at first makes him sympathetic, but eventually gets ponderous. The performance is first-rate—Pitt does a great tortured protagonist. Let's just hope he gets a better-written character next time around.
Louis' murky musings aren't the only problem with his character, either. The whole business of his becoming a vampire bothered me for most of the picture. He's supposedly distraught with grief and longing for death after his wife dies in childbirth. So the first guy who comes along and offers him eternal life, he takes him up on it? Doesn't make much sense to me.
Now, what about that horror? Well, it's basically the graphic depiction of vampires feasting. On people, mostly, but also on the occasional rat, pigeon, poddle, etc. Some of the time the grossness is cut (so to speak) with black humor. But after the umpteenth repetition of the action, it's still horrible, but somehow ho-hum, as well.
One angle that brings the horror into sharper focus, though, is the third member of the vampire "family" that travels together for most of the movie. That's Claudia (Dunst) who is saved from the plague by Lestat's making her undead, but who becomes bitter over her fate as the years drag on.
Her performance in a demanding role is outstanding, but her character will turn the stomachs of even those staunch moviegoers left unaffected by all the dead rats and prostitutes. Because she's about 10 when taken by Lestat, she stays that age for the rest of her vampirish existence. Child abuse takes on a whole new meaning in Interview with a Vampire and it's not a pretty sight.
November 30, 1994