Initiative take on the life of a vampire - a must see!

Rating: 10/10 (5 December 2001)

When I first sat down to watch IwTV I had no idea what is was about and no expectations so I was overwhelmed by the amazing plot, direction and of course acting. Dunst shows strength and depth of emotion in her role as Claudia which I have never seen from a child actor/actress and which is often lacking in many adult performances. Dunst and Pitt portray the very ambiguous relationship between Claudia and Louie with such aptness that even after Claudia has been killed I was still changing my mind and trying to decide whether as a couple they were father and daughter, siblings or lovers. We cannot of course forget the characterisation of Lestat de Lioncourt by Tom Cruise - truly magnificent. Cruise and Pitt together offer the compelling difference in attitudes, towards the Vampire existence, of Louie and Lestat without over dramatising the characters. The characters written by Ann Rice here truly excel: Louie, grieving his dead wife and child has nothing but contempt for his new found life, power, eternal youth and sees it only as a perpetual hell of damnation; and Lestat on the other hand sees his existence as his saving from the dull and meaningless human existence and approaches everything with an optimistic outlook which is rarely disappointed but Louie starts to bring him down and Claudia appears to be the solution. That she is until she becomes "insane". The way the plot then twists the characters around so Louie sees reason for life with the `rebirth' of Claudia and Lestats loss of passion due to the arguments with Claudia and Louie followed by the dramatic scene of the attempted take on his life. The story stays realistic though as no one does a full 180 in personality terms however long they live so the characters are brought right back to their original mind states when Louie meets Armand and Claudia is killed and when Lestat feeds upon the interviewee. Masterful script writing on all counts. If you are a person that prefers the thrills and spills of big screen action then you may enjoy this purely from the action and gor side but for those who are intrigued by original and interesting script writing, superb acting and powerful visual effects and images to empower the previously mentioned this is the movie for you and very much the movie for me.