Reading Log #4

Interview with the Vampire

Movie

Hence the title of the movie, Interview with the Vampire, it tells the story of a Vampire named Louis, being interviewed by a biographer. Louis, who is 200 years old, tells this unnamed biographer his life story. His story begins at the same time as when his life ends. Louis’s brother dies alongside their mother and this sends him down a suicidal path, yet this Vampire named Lestat introduces him to immortality. Together, they become companions, and Louis learns the ways of the Vampire lifestyle from Lestat. However, one of the ‘vampire ways’ is that they must drink fresh blood from humans to the point of death. Louis doesn’t enjoy drinking from humans, as he doesn’t have the tendency or drive to kill innocent beings. Yet, his thirst for blood only grows stronger and he sucks the blood of a young child, whose mother had just passed away from the plague. Louis realises what he has done part way through drinking her blood, the girl it left unconscious and the only way to relieve her of her pain is to continue to drink from her, eventually killing her or to turn her into a vampire as well. He chooses to turn her into a vampire. Now the three of them are like a small family and travel to New Orleans, America. 

First and foremost, I found that this movie wasn’t intended to be a ‘horror’ movie to scare people, however within the movie, it did include traditional horror movie attributes such as it’s supernatural deception and soullessness of those supernatural beings. As a consequence of this, this then leads to the classic and obvious gothic element within this film, is the supernational beings, Vampires.

The whole movie portrays the lifestyle and atmosphere a vampire would possibly obtain in his or her’s immortal life. From this, the tone and emotions within this film expressed the issues of what being a vampire would be like. In the film, because Louis turned the little girl into a vampire, she was going to stay looking like a little girl for the rest of her immortal life, and throughout the film, she ages to over 30 years old and we could see her frustration of wanting to have a body of a proper woman. I could personally feel her frustration, I can only imagine the supernatural in a child’s body for the rest of my life would be the absolute worst. Not only that but because she was stuck in a woman’s body everyone surrounding her still treated her like a child, even though she was mentally ageing beyond 30.

Further on, most, if not all, the film kept with the classic myths and features of what a vampire would be like, such as sleeping in coffins and drinking the blood of the innocents, aka Humans. However, they could also feed on animals, though the blood wasn’t the most nutritious. A rule they had was that they couldn’t drink from already dead organisms. During the film, the little girl wanted to rid Lestat and she tricked him, by making him drink from already dead humans, he turned ugly and ‘sour’, as though as become incredibly sick. During this moment, both and little girl and Louis from then new that drinking from the dead was not to be done. Other classic features would be that they become stronger and faster than humans, and some may possibly receive telepathic abilities.  I personally have watched and read many vampire stories. Such popular vampire films that I have seen would be Twilight, and I have also seen the TV show; The Vampire Diaries. Most of the films I have watched have newly added features to the vampires, making them sound indestructible and completely dominant over the human species. However, this film did not do that, in fact for myself I believe this film gave an equal amount of pros and cons of being a vampire as well as the pros and cons of being human, and this created a small yet present diversion between the creatures, yet not such as though to overpower each other. Because of this I really enjoyed the atmosphere within the movie. 

Overall, I was very entertained by this movie, I can relate to it as I have always had a passion for the concept and idea of Vampires. I have always found being a vampire would be awesome or even if they were real it would be super cool. I am highly intrigued by vampires and it does make me upset that they don’t exist. Well, that’s just my personal opinion.

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