Review: Interview with the Vampire (1994)

MARCH 15TH, 2024

With the second season of Interview with the Vampire in full swing, what better time than to revisit the 1994 film? A pinnacle of vampiric homoeroticism for thirty years, the cinematic adaptation of Anne Rice’s first novel in her Vampire Chronicles series has, obviously, continued to capture the imaginations of queer audiences to this day. Beyond Louis and Lestat’s whole deal, Interview with the Vampire is steeped in queer allegory. From the found family and community dynamics of the vampires and the ways in which the various vampires deal with their status as bloodsucking immortals, there’s plenty of narrative and subtextual material that queer viewers continue to sink their teeth into. 

The titular interview, done by skeptical journalist Daniel Malloy (Christian Slater), covers Louis de Pointe du Lac’s (Brad Pitt) two centuries of immortality. In a despondent, drunken state after the death of his family, Louis stumbles into the arms (and teeth) of the vampire Lestat (Tom Cruise). Now regretting his choice to become a vampire as well, Louis joins Lestat in a parody of domesticity in 19th-century New Orleans. Eventually, Claudia (Kirsten Dunst) joins the duo after Louis turns her without her consent, and the new trio becomes infinitely more dysfunctional. Between multiple attempted murders, fleeing to Europe, nearly dying with the ancient vampires, and successful murders the dynamics between the trio of vampires are constantly in flux and doomed to end in tragedy. 

While the central dynamic between Lestat, Louis, and Claudia is the tentpole of Interview with the Vampire, how each of the vampires interacts with the world is particularly interesting. Lestat, well-acquainted with his monstrous status, moves through the world as a flamboyant and charismatic hedonist. This behavior differs from the vampire elder Armand (Antonio Banderas) who is equally brutal but much more reserved and seemingly holds a moral code. Where Lestat seemingly serves himself and no other master, Armand protects his own to the potential detriment of any dissenters. However, it’s Louis and Claudia who provide some interesting nuance to living as a vampire. Claudia was turned without consent or knowledge as a pre-teen. Like Lestat, who implies he was also turned without consent, she’s violent and unpredictable; her perpetually mid-puberty brain doesn’t help matters. She’s stuck as a confused child for eternity. Louis, at face value, appears to be the most “ethical” of the main trio: he represses his bloodlust and seeks to be a good father to Claudia. In reality, he’s just as monstrous as his companions. His passivity, as well as his selfish choice to turn Claudia, is just as self-serving as the more violent acts of his compatriots.

The dynamic between Louis and Lestat, arguably, is the cultural legacy of Interview with the Vampire. It’s a domestic nightmare, the definition of toxic codependency: polar opposites, yet two sides of the same coin. Lestat is clearly fascinated by Louis which manifests as a need to control him. Even after their messy divorce (via blood poisoning and arson), Lestat is still obsessed enough with Louis to attempt reconciliation nearly a century later. Louis clearly feels the same for a while–he attempts to fix their relationship by adopting a child, after all–but he clearly holds some resentment towards Lestat for indulging his impulsive wish for immortality. That doesn’t mean that he won’t reciprocate the constant longing glances over a dead body though.

After thirty years, the film adaptation of Interview with the Vampire still captures the gay imagination; the positive response to the TV adaptation proves that enough. While some aspects of the film have…aged, it still remains as one of the poster children for gay vampire films. 

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Rating: 🦄🦄🦄🦄

Red Broadwell is a first-year film studies MA student at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Their other work can be found at https://redbroadwell.journoportfolio.com

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