Queen of the Damned

When we were in middle school, and MTV announced that Aaliyah had been killed in a plane crash (the day school started), our 6th grade hearts collectively wept. In particular, I remember showing up to class and the first thing anyone said to me was, "Did you hear what happened to Aaliyah?!" So, because Queen of the Damned was released 6 months later, there was a frame at the end that said, "In memory of Aaliyah." That was a good thing to do, but... it's tragic that this awful piece of work is her legacy.



Directed By: Michael Rymer (Battlestar Galactica)
Starring: Stuart Townsend, Marguerite Moreau and Aaliyah
Plot Summary: "I don't get why anything in particular is happening. I mean, I get that they have to stop Akasha from sucking the world dry. That's a legitimate problem. But everything else is just... what?"

Queen of the Damned is adapted from Anne Rice's third novel in The Vampire Chronicles series. And, since Anne Rice is regarded as the master of all modern vampires and the series has 10 or so books to its name, the novel simply HAS to make more sense than this movie does. Neither Sarah nor I have read Rice's work, but we have the feeling that, as is the case with so many adaptations, certain things from the novel were left out, which would've made this sentimental piece of crap coherent.

Sarah: "I have a few choice words for Anne Rice."
Me: "Sarah, Stephenie Meyer is not Anne Rice's fault!"

Lestat (Townsend) awakens from deep sleep because he hears some random garage band playing goth-ish metal in his house. Where the hell did they come from, and how did they just set up shop on his estate? Lestat decides that he'll join them, and because he's bored, he reveals himself as a vampire to the public. The public's like, "Oh, sweet! A real vampire! This band's groupies die, like, ALL the time, but we're just gonna go with it!" Lestat knows that living his life out in the open will piss off the other vampires, and since he has a deathwish, he taunts them all to come to the concert in Death Valley so they can kill him. There's also a supernatural investigator named Jesse (Moreau), who is the most annoying, nonsensical, monotone girl who could've been in this movie. (Except, of course, the Queen of the Annoying, Nonsensical and Monotone Girls, Bella Swan.) Jesse follows Lestat around for reasons we can't decipher, except that she digs dying violently.

Observations Made As We Watched:
--"How is this crowd laughing at him saying, 'I was just catching my breakfast?' THAT'S MURDER, GUYS!"
--"I'm amused that there is a very distinct 'Dracula' accent. Like, not really Romania, but like 1930s Hollywood Dracula."
--"Why is this happening? WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!"
--"She couldn't have at least put dark circles around her eyes if she was trying to pass in this vampire club?"
--"That's some Mortal Kombat s***!!! FINISH HIM!!!"

"Okay, I don't think he's hot enough to make up for how little sense this makes."

It should be said that we've both seen this movie multiple times. At no point has it ever become more coherent. Lestat narrates the tale, which helps a lot. If you had to watch this movie without his insight, you would start hitting yourself over the head with the nearest blunt object in order to knock some sense back into things. Lestat wanders the earth as a deadly vampire with a wink, which is to say that Stuart Townsend plays him with a healthy dose of self-awareness. The same can't be said for most of the other people in this movie, whose flat, developmentally-challenged characters have no distinct personalities except for Stupid and Ancient Vampire.

Aaliyah's character, Akasha, who is awakened by Lestat's music, is the mother of all vampires. (Which begs the question... how the hell did she become a vampire in the first place? What came first, the chicken or the egg!?) Her goal is to take over the world, living openly as a vampire goddess, drinking everyone dry. Which falls under the personality category of Stupid AND Ancient Vampire: She first appears as a statue, which she became because she got too greedy and decimated the blood supply the LAST time she walked the earth. WHAT??? How would you not learn from those previous errors? How would you continue without a sustainability plan? Who's running your cabinet, the Republican party?!

The Best Part: Townsend, no question. He takes Lestat's identity seriously, but Lestat doesn't take being a vampire seriously, so it all works together to create a cheeky sense of humor about the situation.

The Worst Part: We've seen this movie together at least 3 times and still don't understand it. Nobody's motives have reason, except maybe Lestat's deathwish, because eternity would be an excessive amount of time to spend alone. The rest is a maudlin, over-stylized music video.

Queen of the Damned gets a D-. For "terribleness and being horrid," as Sarah puts it.

(Poster and trailer © Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.)