Annie Rice’s energetic, tortured vampire reinvents the popular blood-sucking tale in 4 years, establishing influences ranging from True Blood to for the tone and templates of various aspects of The Vampire Diaries and Twilight .
Meanwhile, Rice’s saga inspired countless attempts at contrast—about undead designed to make vampires terrifying again (see something like 20 Days of Night ) or mocking their torture (like the movie and series versions of We Are in the Shadows what to do in ).
Interview with Vampires
Bottom Line Nosfera tuning!
Air Date: 10 Sunday afternoon, October 2 (AMC) Cast: Jacob Anderson, Sam Reed, Bailey Bass, Eric Bogosian
Created by:Rolin Jones from Anne Rice
AMC adapts Rice’s creation What could be the funniest thing about a sex novel Interview with a vampire 1910 is the feeling that series creator Rollin Jones (HBO’s Perry Mason ) is trying to tell the difference – and give fans one of them Will recognize Louis and Lester while dehumidifying some of Rice’s restaurants Swamp Prose.
It’s a worthy goal if not perfectly executed, I think the undead believers prefer one extreme or the other – like Bram Stoker Dracula isn’t half soap opera and half horror yet – it’s going to be frustrating. But through five of the first season’s seven episodes, I’ve enjoyed this interview solidifying the central relationship of the source material, distilling some of the more humorous aspects, and getting thoroughly caught up in someone else’s camping. Not terribly intimidating, but at least sometimes disconcerting.
Unlike Rice’s own writing of Neil Jordan’s story, Jones’ adaptation maintains the form of a book with few details. The framing set introduced us to Eric Bogosian’s Daniel Malloy, an aging Gonzo reporter who 40+ years ago interviewed Over Vampires (Jacob Anderson’s Lewis). Daniel, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, had a slack in his career, so when Louis summoned him to Dubai, he jumped – presumably choosing a secluded place where money could Let your past go away – have another extended conversation and a chance to actually post this.
Since Daniel is not the “boy” in Rice’s book, the series could almost be considered a sequel — or at least a criticism of the unreliable narrator, as his version of Lewis now The life story he was about to tell had little in common with the one he once told.
Here, Louis’ story begins 1910 In New Orleans, Louis is a fairly successful The brothel owner is in the city’s Storyville district. Louis is Creole and thus able to achieve a level of success in the city, but he remains an outsider – one who is still grieving for his late father and trying to live up to his mother’s (Rae Dawn Chong’s) expectations , protects his restless and unstable brother (Steven Novlet) and realizes that accepting his sexuality could make him a permanent outcast.
His appetite. I’ve read the book and watched the movie countless times, and it’s the relationship between Lester and Louis that I can best understand. Part of that was because Jones and early director Alan Taylor could get Lester and Louis to embrace their queer identities. But it also conveys that, by virtue of his whiteness and self-fulfilling privilege, Lester represents what Louis aspires to and knows that entrenched New Orleans establishment will never allow it. The fact that Lestat is a vampire is secondary, at least for a while, until Louis is drawn to it too.
Understanding and feeling the connection between Lestat and Louis is not the same, mind you, you want to be endlessly immersed in their pain, or at least Louis’ growing pain. He was unhappy, and his dissatisfaction grew, as a man of color was ignored and marginalized in 10 early-century New Orleans in the early days of his newfound immortality. For me, the movie turned into a chore almost immediately, and the series got to a similar level a few hours later – the pilot is 10 minutes, then more traditional 40 minute episodes – until Louis and Leicester make the ill-considered decision to expand their clan to include teenager Claudia (Belebas).
As Kirsten Dunst’s brilliant and supernaturally deranged performance as Claudia ultimately elevates the film, The arrival of Bass is an adrenaline injection for AMC’s interview
. She’s so funny and wild, and her take on baby vampire pain so different from Anderson’s that I was able to accept the actual reality behind Claudia’s aging from the book and the movie. She’s probably here 10-ish and can be considered an adult; it’s a semi-essential drama to reduce the creepiness, Also a totally necessary drama to hire an actress who won’t go through puberty, by embodying a character who can’t grow old in an ongoing series.
The series still finds poignancy in Claudia’s woman trapped in her child’s physical predicament – retrospective influence apparently from getting the right people in , which is having its own TV Showtime treatment — and resonating widely in this mixed family forced to exist on the fringes of society.
Subtext works better with silliness and slapstick, which is the ongoing Interview with the Vampire movement takes these things seriously, but Do not be too serious. Making Louis’s interrogators cynical and seasoned professionals gives the series a level of ironic distance. Daniel, a prisoner and guest of honor in Louis’ palatial Middle Eastern high-rise, utters an intimidating contempt every time his master confuses his coming-out story with the story of his first murder. At times, the rhetorical rhetoric makes the series feel smart and alive, but at other times it makes the show feel superior to itself—or at least for viewers who prefer to simply get stuck. Sometimes I smile wryly, but I also often think, “Man, why choose source material that you’re sure you can surpass?”
Luckily, the rich technical fun of the series is always Worth admiring. Jones and Taylor have Boardwalk Empire on their resumes, and their appreciation for the style and social rifts of the period is reflected in Mara Lepere-Schloop’s detailed production designs, Carol Cutshall’s impeccable Clothing and gorgeous photography by David Tattersall. You can get the sense that Jones will be making a story about the fall of Storyville soon, and the vampires are just a portal, but with enough gooey blood and vicious violence to satisfy most audiences. Anytime you think interviews with vampires are about to get too cold – and a strict Rice adaptation should feel like a slow dip in an estuary – you’ll feel a burst of excess – Gore or float over the top, butt nudity sex extreme enough to elicit laughter that may have been intentional (but probably not always).
A solid cast provides some grounding, or just as much grounding as you can get an ensemble that looks ready for a Nosferatu-themed fragrance ad. Anderson is convincingly eager and uncomfortable in his environment, while Reed is convincingly able to control every room. They have enough chemistry to sell an instantly poisonous coupling, and if you don’t buy it, that’s where the Bogosian Viper and Bass Dangerous boom comes into play. Norfleet, Chong, and voice-over king John DiMaggio offered strong support as city councillors who embodied New Orleans’ condescending racist establishment.
I would say that ultimately, interviewing vampires needs to be closer to choosing a tone – deciding how much it wants to put into the source material and how much it The degree to which you want to drop it completely (it no doubt needs to, depending on how many seasons there are). However, when you mix genres like this, there can be some ongoing confusion. I would also like to see more of a vampire metaphor in this now-COVID-era story, which has long been explained through the prism of AIDS. Overall, it’s a promising start, with plenty of appealing elements to chew on.
