Horror Movie Review: Queen of the Damned

Queen of the Damned (2002) is not a great movie, but Aaliyah's performance/image as Akasha, the "queen of the damned" is one of the most perfect bits of casting ever in the whole history of film. She is dark and sultry and very very evil. She is my favorite female villain on film. She is the number one character I try to embody as I walk down the street, for a woman in our patriarchal society must embody a chick of extreme badassness, and you would NEVER mess with Akasha. She can burn you from the inside out with just the flick of her wrist. She can rip out your heart with her bare hands and suck it so dry that it crumbles between her fingers (see below). The scene these gifs are from is my favorite villain-entrance scene ever, and it happens around the 50minute mark in the film. She bellydances into a bar full of vampires, does that heart-sucking thing, incinerates the building and all the vampires in it with her MIND, then walks out triumphantly. It is THE most empowering action/destruction scene ever. The reason she can incinerate vampires with her mind is that she is the original first vampire. She holds within her the source of vampirism, effectively the mother of all vampires. They can't live without her. As I've mentioned before, though Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles have a lot of flaws, her origin story for vampires is the most intriguing to me. The book is the best of the series in my opinion because the entire history of vampires is laid out in great detail within.

The score is pretty great but the soundtrack is mostly awful. The music of Lestat's band is represented by Jonathan Davis' (of Korn) voice and arrangements. It's just not my style and makes the movie seem even cheesier than it is. The casting in the film is hit or miss. In contrast to the PERFECT casting of Aaliyah as Akasha there's the dubious casting of Lestat, Jesse, and Maharat, just to name a few. The details taken from the book are at times right on and at other times questionable. There is an omitted character (Mekare) that is sort of really important to the storyline of the book. There are a couple of rewrites of plot points that don't make sense to me (Marius is NOT Lestat's maker, etc) because they contradict both the book and the first movie. They totally left out Akasha's evil scheme to eradicate all but 10ish percent of the men on earth, which was a big part of her evil and why she needed to be de-throned. As it is in the film version, I didn't really get why she needed to be "dealt with". There are many parts in the movie that don't explain what's happening or convey the emotions felt by the characters well at all, which I think would make the film hard to follow if you hadn't read the book. And if you're going to assume we've read the book, stay true to the book, you know?

This film is really not as bad as I'm making it sound, but it is quite a big disappointment to me because I love the book and so many aspects of the film feel like they're almost right. At times they get the emotions/themes of the book so right, at other times so very very wrong. Aaliyah died just after, or maybe even during, shooting the film. My assumption is that the editing was rushed in order to get it out as soon after her death as possible and I think the film's end result really suffered because of that.

The treatment of women is not great. It does pass the Bechdel test, but barely. In the book, Jesse's relationship with Maharet and the Great Family was a big part of the plot, but this movie makes it all about Lestat. The book is so dense in content, however, that I don't think a movie could ever do it justice unless it was done as a trilogy. I would love to see this movie redone right someday, but without Aaliyah, it will be difficult. What a tragedy to lose her just when she was on her way to becoming a legend. The year of her death came her villain film debut and a spectacular album! RIP, Aaliyah. We needed you so much.  I am very impressed that film made the right decision in casting Akasha as a black woman. It would have been a complete failure had they cast a white woman, because this chick is from ancient Egypt! She's SUPPOSED to be black, and I am pleasantly shocked they did this part right in film for once.

Despite its oceans of disappointments, "Queen of the Damned" is still a campy mostly-good time. 

Aesthetics/Visual Effects: 3.5

Plot: 2.5

Characters: 3.0

Score: 3.0

Treatment of Women/Minorities: 3.0

Rewatchability: 3.5

OVERALL: 18.5

Top Ten Books

So there's that rash spreading on Facebook wherein you tag some friends and force them to tag other friends...and it's all about your ten most "influential" books. I'm doing it in a blog so I can describe why I like the books without the overstimulation of Facebook churning in the background. My, that site can be distracting...

I choose to interpret "influential" as being the books that changed something about the way I think. They are in order of appearance into my life:

1) Drawing Blood // Poppy Z Brite -- This is probably my favorite book of all time and I cannot separate how much of this is because of the quality of the work itself versus the impression I made of it when I first read it. This is a book about wayward youth and the listless darkness of the goth soul. If that sounds laughable, perhaps you're not a real goth. Poseur! Poppy's prose is exquisite and I still reread this book at least once every couple of years. It's like a comfy cardigan that's never too frayed as far as you're concerned, thankyouverymuch.

Fun Fact: The copy my bff Kim and I first read still resides at the original library in which I checked it out for the first time. That very book has been read by all the tortured goth kids of Joplin over the last two decades.

2. The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching // Thich Nhat Hanh -- I spent a lot of my teenage years searching through spirituality and religion for something that "fit". I researched absolutely everything from Satanism to Astrology. This is the first book about Buddhism I ever read and I was hooked. The tenants of Buddhism are still important to me and if I ever need to refocus on a way of thinking that really centers me, I go back to Buddhist texts. This is the book that taught me drishta dharma sukha viharin, a phrase I've never forgotten and might get tattooed on my body someday which means "dwelling happily in the present moment".

3. Queen of the Damned // Anne Rice -- Rice is maligned pretty much everywhere these days, but I buy her version of vampires. I like 'em verbose, beautiful, and full of religious guilt. This book truly celebrates Akasha, the baddest villainess in all vampire popular mythology. The book outlines the birth of vampires in Rice's world, the most compelling vampire origin tale I've ever read (and I've read a LOT of vampire books). I have a very beat up paperback copy of this book. If that doesn't say, "Book, you are good enough, you are smart enough, and gosh darnit people LIKE you!" I don't know what does.

4. High Fidelity // Nick Hornby -- I like my fictional characters in three simple varieties: a) a music-obsessed weirdo, b) a gay or gender-confused weirdo, and c) a goth and/or supernatural in a dark way weirdo. This book fulfills category A. I'm not sure what else to say about it. You've seen the movie...the book is better, but the movie is my favorite movie of all time...so, it's pretty fucking good. Now I want to read it...

5. Hardcore Zen // Brad Warner -- This is my second favorite book about Buddhism told from the POV of a straight edge punk that loves Japanese monster movies and sitting zazen. If Warner hadn't pointed out how punk Buddhism is in this book, I might have had to do it...'cause Buddhism is soooo punk, yo. This book talks about Buddhism in plain language.

6. Love is a Mixtape // Rob Sheffield -- My favorite kind of nonfiction is a music memoir and this is the ULTIMATE music memoir.

7. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies // Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith -- Ultimately, what I love about this book is the Austen part of it, but I have to admit that before this book caught my attention, I hadn't read Jane Austen. I know! Despicable, but true. I've since read the real "Pride and Prejudice" several times and damn if that isn't a classic!

8. How Not to Write, by Someone Who Doesn't // Delilah Des Anges -- Del is a dear friend I met in a vampire chat room back in the '90s. This book is the most frank and to the point writing guide ever and I really appreciate it. Just shut up and write, bitch! My output has been slightly larger because of reading this book. Go buy it.

9. Hunger Games trilogy // Suzanne Collins -- These books are probably the most powerful fiction I've ever read. I read them during the winter of 2011 after the tornado and I cried SOOO much while reading them. I'm not a big fan of tragedy, usually ever, but Collins' dystopia seemed so real that I couldn't walk away. Katniss is the character I relate to most of any fiction character I've ever met...except the bow and arrow stuff.

10. Ready Player One // Ernest Cline -- This book is just the most fun dystopia of all time.