Week Two - Interview With the Vampire

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Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire. For the longest time, I have been wanting to read this book, and this week was a pleasant excuse to do so since I’m unhealthily obsessed with vampire fiction. 

For the first quarter of the novel, I was all over the story and ate it up. Reading about the characters and their world felt like a wonderful breath of fresh air, being that a lot of vampire media has been disappointing to me lately. Rice delved into the psychological impact of immortality and Louis’s struggle with his new life as a vampire. Louis’s reflections of his past, his letting go of humanity, and his complex, almost toxic relationship with Lestat were all extremely compelling to me because of how beautifully written it was. And god, Lestat may be a jerk and I hate his attitude, but he is beautiful.

Reading this novel was an experience that really captured every ounce of my attention…until Claudia showed up. I was able to tolerate her for a while, but once Louis started to feel affections toward her in a sort of romantic way, the book was practically killed for me. Now I understand that Claudia is an interesting representation of Rice’s daughter that passed away at a young age, but Louis falling in love with a child was kind of gross and I feel like the book could have been done just as well without it. She is a five-year-old girl and Louis is a fully grown adult, that shit is nasty. I would have been completely fine with her if Louis loved her in at least a fatherly way. Also, she seems to be kind of a brat.

I also took time to watch Only Lovers Left Alive. I personally found this film to be hard to sit through, as it was kind of uneventful. The cinematography was gorgeous, but I’m sorry, the music was bad. I do like the way the vampires in the film lived though. For some of my personal vampire fiction, I also included the concept of vampires smuggling blood from hospitals, so I’m glad I was able to feel a connection with the vampires in the film. The biggest thing that bothered me was Tilda Swinton being casted as Eve. She plays a great vampire, but for some reason seeing her paired along with Tom Hiddleston as a married couple felt off and kind of unnatural. It wasn’t entirely bothersome and I don’t really have any better recommendation of an actress to play Eve, so don’t really take it from me.

All in all, I love vampires, I don’t like Claudia and Louis’s relationship, and What We Do In the Shadows is by far the most entertaining piece of vampire media I’ve experienced as of recent.

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