What The Film!? – Queen Of The Damned

What The Film?! is a weekly column exclusive to Under The Gun Review that brings to light the plot holes Hollywood hoped you’d never notice. Written by comedy writer Dane Sager, this column shows no mercy to films that try and pull the proverbial wool over our eyes.

If you know a film with major plot holes that you feel needs to be exposed, tell us! Email utgjames@gmail.com with the subject “What The Film” and we’ll try to get your suggestion featured on the site.

This Week’s Movie: 2002’s Queen Of The Damned

Back in the 1990s Warner Brothers owned the film rights to Anne Rice’s entire Vampire Chronicles series, opening what they believed would be a franchise with 1994’s Interview With The Vampire. After that, WB kind of forgot that they owned the license and didn’t make another movie till a decade later, not because they wanted to make it or that the timing was right, but because the rights were reverting back to Anne Rice and she could have sold the rights to another company. So WB took the little time they had and rushed out a movie that was just painful to almost every sense. If this sounds familiar, it’s because the Fantastic Four movie I covered was made the same way.

I’m confident that this entire movie set smelled like Hot Topic and Hockey Skates

The movie was quickly pieced together, causing Tom Cruise (who played the vampire Lestat in the prior movie) to not sign on. Lestat was played by Stuart Townsend in this movie, an actor who’s only notable role is that he played Lestat in this pile of suck. The music was written collaboratively between composer Richard Gibbs and Korn frontman Jonathan Davis, and it sounds exactly what you’d think music written by Jonathan Davis would sound like.

Speaking of smelling like Hot Topic and Hockey Skates

The movie opens with the vampire Lestat waking up from his crypt when he gets the idea to be a rock star, despite being asleep for a long time and has no idea what rock and roll is. He immediately discovers a nu-metal band and loves it, despite being born in the 1700s and being trained in classical music. When wandering into their practice, he screams with Jonathan Davis’ voice and is promptly complimented on what a great voice he has (when he clearly doesn’t). The band becomes massively popular.

At the same time, a paranormal researcher named Jesse thinks that the guy who’s telling everyone he’s a vampire may be a vampire. Her friends and coworkers agree and tell her that she’s right and tells her his origin where he was turned into a vampire hundreds of years ago by another vampire named Marius. Jesse, now knowing that he’s a vampire now, she goes to a vampire bar, tells everyone she’s a vampire, and that she was made by Marius because she’s really good at making bad decisions.

Also, this happened when using Google Image Search, so that’s weird.

When they finally introduce Marius, despite being born in 30 BC Rome, he has an American accent. There’s a long and boring story with lots of far reaching theories to explain this, but the short answer is that they didn’t try with this movie. At all.

Jesse tracks down Lestat multiple times in the movie and literally provokes and insults him the entire time. Finally, she tries to convince him to turn her into a vampire. Lestat declines and tries to convince her out of it by killing a woman and drinking her blood in front of Jesse. Jesse is horrified and changes her mind because vampires sucking blood is something a paranormal researcher who has an obsession with vampires forgot about.

As it turns out, Lestat’s band’s music wakes up an ancient vampire named Akasha. Akasha wants to find Lestat and does so by going to that vampire bar (because there’s only one in the world, apparently) and then murders the shit out of everyone there for absolutely no reason. Both Jesse and Akasha follow Lestat to a concert, where they watch him hilariously fail to lip sync. His awful performance is soon interrupted by swarms of vampires attacking Lestat (who easily fights them off effortlessly). Akasha then appears on stage, taking Lestat and flying away to a distant island where they plan to rule humanity together.

Vampires prefer to wear just the collar and cuffs of their shirt, apparently

Akasha tells Lestat to prove his love to her by killing Jesse. This is supposed to be a dramatic scene, but it isn’t because every interaction Lestat and Jesse has had, she’s just bothers him and he gets pissed at her. So when he kills her, there’s no reaction in the audience because there isn’t a protagonist in this movie. Jesse is the closest thing and she’s in only four scenes in the entire movie. Lestat is an unlikeable asshole who acts like a baby having a tantrum the entire movie till he gets what he wants. It was obvious that Akasha was the antagonist but she didn’t show up till the last 20 minutes.

After killing Jesse, Lestat and all the other vampires killing Akasha by getting everyone to drink her blood at once. Lestat is such an inconsistent character, he doesn’t make any sense. What was the movie about? It was just a bunch of meaningless vampire bullshit put together with characters you don’t care about and dislike. This movie wasn’t even “so bad it’s funny”, it was just bad. This is the first time in my entire life that I have ever questioned how watching a bad movie could affect my well being.

This image is just as funny a second time

Dane can’t think of a funny way to sign off today, he’s just kind of sad after watching that movie. You can follow him on Tumblr and Twitter! (It might cheer him up, you never know!)

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2 Responses to “What The Film!? – Queen Of The Damned”

  1. Pantagruella says:

    This is a fair review. I think some of the sets are well done in this film. I quite like the concert scene even though the vampires just fall over dead. Aaliyah looks the part. At least the vampires are seen as evil. They’re not meant to be something to envy and emulate. However, as you say, there’s no dramatic tension. It’s meant to be a piece of eye candy for a certain generation.

  2. I agree with Pantagruella–and I’ll say what you say about the music is unfair. Also, you’re funny.