Queen of the Damned* 1/2 out of **** February 27, 2002 BY ADAM KEMPENAAR In the interest of full disclosure, let me say right off the top that vampire movies aren't really my thing. One scene in Salem's Lot, Stephen King's second book-to-screen adaptation, traumatized me so much as a kid that I couldn't sleep with my head next to a window until I got into college. (Though looking back on it now, was it the vampires that terrified me so much or former "Starsky & Hutch" star David Soul's acting?) Queen of the Damned, based on Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, didn't do much to reawaken any of my childhood fears, nor, for that matter, did it do much to hold my interest. The movie has enough style and grim atmosphere. What it doesn't have is even the slightest hint of a coherent, compelling storyline. After a refreshing 200-year nap, the melancholy vampire Lestat (Stuart Townsend) awakens to the sound of crunching guitars and decides that, rather than stalk around in the shadows as vampires do, he'll become -- get this -- a rock star. He cleverly dubs his band "The Vampire Lestat," and overnight the group is heating up the charts with its Nine Inch Nails sound and Lestat's macabre lyrics. (Am I the only one laughing at this?) While the self-absorbed frontman develops a vast legion of mortal fans, including witless groupies who become his dinner, the vampire community throughout the world isn't so thrilled about him drawing attention to their existence and revealing secrets about their way of life in his music. I could go on about the plot, except that I quickly zoned off about 10 minutes in when Lestat holds a press conference to announce his one and only live performance to be held in (where else?) Death Valley. I was too busy dreaming up a companion episode of "Behind The Music": "And when we come back, Lestat's bloodlust threatens to derail his band's rise to stardom." [Cut to soundbite from drummer] "He was becoming insatiable. He sucked so much blood in Cleveland that we didn't have any fans left to come to our show..." Although the late R&B singer-turned-actress Aaliyah plays the title character, and all the commercials for Queen of the Damned promote her as the featured attraction, her role as Akasha, a vengeful vampire goddess, is scarcely more than an afterthought in the movie's inane plot. Combine Aaliyah's wasted character with Jessie Reeves (Marguerite Moreau), a supernatural researcher who was apparently raised by vampires and is now obsessed with Lestat, and it's as if screenwriters Scott Abbott and Michael Petroni had parts of (at least) two different movies written and then tried, unsuccessfully, to merge them into one script. The story is so clumsily strung together that when the anti-climactic showdown between Akasha and her enemies finally rolls around, you probably won't have much clue what all the fuss is about, nor will you care. Fortunately, Townsend's convincing performance manages to save Damned from being a total debacle. He's brash, creepy, and somehow able to utter such lines as, "Such regard for mortals! You should have thought of that before you killed me," to his creator and former mentor Marius (Vincent Perez), with a straight face. Throughout the film, Lestat describes the never-ending loneliness and despair of being a vampire. It sounds rough all right. But if I had to choose between living alone for eternity or being forced to sit through this movie again, life as a bloodsucker might not seem so bad after all. Agree? Disagree? E-mail CinemaScoped at: cinemascoped@sbcglobal.net |
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