Interview With the Vampire Is a Bloody Good Nightmare

Anne Rice, as an writer, is obsessive about the ways in which love is a singularly horrible expertise. It tears you aside, it destroys you, it eats you alive. In the latest adaptation of her work, AMC’s Interview With the Vampire, love is positioned on the middle of a reconstructed model of her seminal twisted fantasy, leading to a sweeping, Southern Gothic romance the place two vampires make a idiot of demise with their inescapable, unending, horrific love.

You might imagine you realize the story of Louis de Pont du Lac and his immortal vampire maker, Lestat de Lioncourt, however you’ve by no means seen them fairly like this. While the present takes lots of inspiration from the e book, key plot parts have been modified to contemporize the story and make it extra palatable to the fashionable viewers. In the e book, for instance, Louis is a Louisiana plantation proprietor who permits Lestat to feed on the enslaved individuals which can be compelled to work on the grounds. It can be troublesome, if not inconceivable, to sympathize with the maudlin anger of this sort of character, particularly if his important character stress got here from his concern with changing into an excellent particular person. Considering his previous sins, his immortal brooding on morality would solely ever come off as annoyingly self-serving and shallow.

This present is just not that model of Louis. Instead of a late 18th century slave-owner, the modern Louis de Pont du Lac (Jacob Anderson) is a Black man who owns a nice number of brothels in New Orleans within the early twentieth century. He helps his well-to-do household, performs at politics and poker within the native alderman’s membership, and, because it so occurs, is clearly, explicitely, and with none sort of dodging across the query, a homosexual man. Already this model of Louis is establishing a narrative that’s narratively very totally different from the 200-year-old vampire of the unique e book, however who nonetheless retains that core stress of the character—a person who is simply too fashionable for his lifetime, however who by no means fairly learns how one can be a contemporary man.

After watching the primary 5 episodes of AMC’s Interview With The Vampire, I’ve nothing however reward for the collection. It was, I really feel, made for me. Unapologetically queer, unafraid to wreck the supply materials whereas nonetheless managing to protect its bones, and exceptionally detailed in its artistic manufacturing; the present takes the unique work and holds it as much as the daylight, letting the pores and skin and flesh burn till all that’s left is one thing shiny, polished, and undeniably grotesque.

One of the issues that I like about this collection is that there aren’t any coy glances at queerness. There is not any subtext or sidelining of the queer relationship between Louis and Lestat; as a substitute they’re co-conspirators in seduction, explicitely in love and obsessive about one another. They are livid and deadly companions, and their love is nightmarish. Interview With The Vampire has created a luxurious exploration of queerness on the flip of the century, removing the candy nothings that followers had to select from the textual content and as a substitute embracing the grandeur of the sweltering Southern Gothic setting, making a pair of characters which can be consistently tearing themselves aside as they try and fuck their approach out of feeling harm.

One of outcomes of this disregard for subtlety is that the sexual subtext, which for therefore lengthy was on the core of the strain between Louis and Lestat (Sam Reid), has been laid naked, like a uncooked nerve. AMC’s adaptation should as a substitute discover new methods to bleed. As a person turns into a monster and learns how one can be human, the seductive chew of the collection comes from Louis’ battle together with his faith, his want to be the nice monster, his racialized interactions with the white politicians and businessmen, and his fraying ties to his household, who develop more and more extra afraid of him because the collection continues and tragedy strikes again and again. It is a spiral that winds itself tighter and tighter round Louis, who was killed and has died for love. As for Lestat, his desperation, his loneliness, his monstrosity, all of it tears at him, slowly being picked away like final season’s wardrobe. His soul is unfastened on the seams and he has sought out Louis, determined for somebody to affix himself to as he stares down the specter of immortality, armed towards the darkness with solely a needle.

Another a part of Interview With the Vampire, and all of Anne Rice’s novels, is that it’s deeply, basically bizarre. She is continually attempting to elucidate herself, to dig into the origin of her lore, work, and characters. It is an admirable trait in an writer to be so keen to interrogate your self as a supply of creativity, however in motion, it leads to some fascinatingly bonkers origin tales for vampires, witches, and even aliens. While the present isn’t fairly doing all of that (but), it’s definitely embracing the off-putting strangeness of Rice’s vampires. Supernaturally robust, quick, and harsh, the vampires of the present have a couple of trick up their sleeves on the subject of coping with humanity writ giant. The result’s that every part is just a bit bit odd. It leans into the absurd with out compunction, and it’s pleasant.

The factor to recollect is that this present has made decisions. And when it got here to a degree, any level, the place it needed to make decisions, it made essentially the most selection doable. The selections are additional, dramatic, excessive, excessive, gory, and flamboyant. While the present continues to be extremely approachable, it has created an environment of grandiosity that makes each a part of it really feel heavy, laden with that means, and soaked in blood. It is, briefly, extraordinarily fucking campy, and it’s unfraid to throw a fucking ball.

AMC’s Interview With the Vampire is aware of that it has to take care of the previous iterations of its story, however as a substitute of distancing itself from the books or the movie, it’s gleefully reveling within the dialog. In the e book, Louis seeks out Daniel Malloy within the ‘70s, relating his story to the young reporter. In the series, Louis has done the same thing, but after the end of the interview went poorly, Louis and Daniel separated. Now, 50 years later, in the undeniably modern 2022, Louis has invited Daniel to Dubai in order to attempt to tell his story–again. This show contends with the meta of reinterpretation, and seems to enjoy wrestling with it. Eric Bogosian as Daniel brings aggressive, no-nonsense directness to the series, a fantastically human addition amid all the monsters we are otherwise surrounded by. What comes of this acknowledgement of change and adaptation is a nuanced awareness of how abuse can shred the tapestry of memory.

The relationship between Louis and Lestat is romantic, yes, but it’s additionally very clearly poisonous, obsessive, and damaging. By giving two interviews, Louis has house to replicate, and we’re given an extremely intentional exploration of an abusive relationship. It appears like a crucial admission, and by permitting time to move—and acknowledging that we as an viewers can get pleasure from watching the downwards spiral of two males wrapped up in one another—Interview With the Vampire confronts its personal shortcomings and, very similar to what it does with the queer subtext, turns implications into examinations, making a stronger, tighter, extra mature work.

AMC’s Interview With the Vampire is a horny, edgy, bizarre, modern, and complicated reconstruction of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. Within an clever articulation of violence, masculinity, and love, Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid bleed, clawing at New Orleans and one another. The writing understands not solely the characters, however the intrinsically campy, absurd premise of the vampire itself. It sacrifices the golden calves to sate the viewers and the result’s a celebration of all of the issues that gave the collection cult standing to start with. Interview With the Vampire is a predatory collection, unafraid to go for the jugular, ripping on the most beloved elements of itself to get the viewers to claw at their very own necks, gasping and determined for extra.

Interview With the Vampire will probably be launched weekly on AMC, beginning October 2.

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