Maybe a worthy novel, but hardly a worthy film

Rating: 5/10 (8 August 2009)

Neil Jordan's Inverview with the Vampire strikes me as one of those films which can only be appreciated if you read the novel, which I have not. Like Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein (which came out in the same year) this is not really a horror film, it is a glamorous Gothic drama, but not a very good one. Quite frankly it is boring, lacking in direction, and features too much dialog which is intended to be poetic or melodramatic, but instead strikes me as silly.
It starts in a tiny hotel room, with a journalist played by Christian Slater. He is interviewing Louis, a dapper young fellow, who proceeds to dictate the story of how he became a vampire. It started when he met L'estad de Lioncourt in 18th century France, who offered to show him the the ways of darkness. From there the story becomes a series of strange chapters, decade after decade, century after century. If I was in Slater's shoes I would be asleep, long before Louis finished his story.
One of the differences between novels and movies is the amount of story. A book can take as much time as it wants, while a movie needs to cut things down a bit for structure. It is for this reason that I am sure Interview with the Vampire is an excellent and very intriguing book. As a movie however, it is a dud.