Queen of the Damned (2002)
Starring Stuart Townsend, Aaliyah, Vincent Perez, Marguerite Moreau, Paul McGann, Lena Olin.
Directed by Michael Rymer.
Rated R.
Grade: B+
"All she wants is hell on earth."
Queen of the Damned is an unexpectedly audacious, even daring, vampire flick that shares with Moulin Rouge a fearlessness of seeming ridiculous. It has the courage of its material and the willingness to go completely over the top when the script requires it. Director Michael Rymer is clearly disinterested in making a hip movie, and he comes up with maybe the most entertaining vampire movie in history. It starts out campy, then transcends camp.
It is also notable for being the final role of singer-turned-actress Aaliyah, who perished in a plane crash soon after the film wrapped. The studio, cynically trying to capitalize off of her post-mortem popularity has made her the center of Queen of the Damned marketing campaign despite the fact that her part is relatively brief. The real star is little-known Irishman Stuart Townsend, and unless you've been obsessively frequenting every little British film released at your local arthouse, you will probably have never heard of him. He plays the Vampire Lestat, who decides to emerge from hibernation and commence a quest to help vampires walk fearless in the open. How does he go about this? He starts a heavy metal band.
I am not making this up. The movie really is about a vampire who starts a heavy metal band. He doesn't even bother to hide his true identity. Though of course, the music industry and the rest of the world think that this is the elaborate gimmick of a cash-hungry rock star, the rest of the vampire nation is more than a little concerned about this ruse blowing their cover. Not least of them is Lestat's mentor Marius (the wonderful Vincent Perez), who gets particularly nervous when his former student awakens the title character, played by the menacing-looking Aaliyah, who wears gothically revealing outfits and wiggles alot.
Queen of the Damned presents many bizarre, mind-boggling, hilarious, exciting plotlines and doesn't chicken out on any of them. The movie's climax is an outdoor rock concert, where Lestat and his bandmates' flying about the stage, followed by their dispatching of ambushing vampires is seen by the enthusiastic audience as a particularly impressive pyrotechnics act. Again, I am not making this up.
When Aaliyah shows up approximately halfway through, we are intoduced to author Anne Rice's characteristically complex vampire mythology, and though the movie doesn't delve into it very deeply, it doesn't treat us like idiots by simplifying it to the point where it loses all meaning. Also making an appearance right around here is Lena Olin, so wonderful in The Ninth Gate and adding a touch of surprisingly genuine poignancy to this weird, weird movie.
This all sounds very campy, and in retrospect it is, but watching it is an exhilirating experience. This is completely uninhibited filmmaking from a group of very talented people; I'm surprised to see such a no-holds-barred studio release. Even when it seems like an exercise to see how much the director can hurl at you, it's still refreshing in its gleeful, anarchic, anything-goes spirit. Any movie to which I am forced to apply the phrase "I am not making this up" more than once has to be extraordinary one way or the other.