The Vampire Lestat
Not only will vampires come to your country and kill all your people, they’ll come back twenty years later and make a TV show about how killing all your people made the vampires sad.
The Vampire Lestat is the worst thing to happen on television since my son’s appearance on the Jerry Springer show episode “my baby has a baby and now that baby is a 300lb baby”.
Im going to try to be succinct, but i reserve the right to descend into a rant. Id say the first two seasons of Interview With The Vampire were flawed, but generally fun. To the point where there was a moment when I was semi looking forward to the camp potential of this show.
Unfortunately, I feel like we only half got that. Source material subtext is turned into faux-pornhub incestual titillation. Implied torture and sexual assault become full scenes. The music is bad, cliche ridden and autotuned to death. each episode suggests (read threatens) that i could stream the songs on spotify, and id rather eat my own hands. Performances and studio scenes hold the same kind of contempt for music, the music business and how bands work. Ive seen people try and justify this as “Lestat coping with trauma” which just makes me sigh.
We’re in the post-A24, post-Babadook, monster is metaphor for X era and our current zeitgeist has suggested that all mainstream horror media must be about coping with trauma. Yes, I get it, I have seen Don’t Look Now, there is a way to tell a personal, unsettling, intimate story, but, look, I’m sorry, it’s lazy shorthand now, you know it, I know it, we’re just not talking about it. I’m sure it makes you feel like the shit you’re pumping out has weight and value. Well done, but you can stop it now.
Is it any wonder why the freakier folk seek out trash by “visionaries” like Donald Farmer who offers us cheapo fake looking blood over Jessa Flux’s heaving chest. But somehow if my buddies want funding for Pallynoz The Cabin Pirate it suddenly has to be about growing up with family alcoholism. When what we really want is for Pallynoz The Cabin Pirate to eat everyone’s face. But that wont win awards. That wont trigger precious discourse. So what do we have? Sad vampires now have to appeal to the thirsty Monster - Dahmer: The Story of Dahmer The Monster (Dahmer) fans. Only fans raised clowns who think big knives and long yelled monologues about nothing are deep and edgy and cool.
Also the actor playing Lestat got goofy with the accent and he sounds like Tommy Weiseu.
[Scene From The Vampire Lestat]
Truth be told, I couldn’t finish the last episode. There was enough plot in the source novel but because they thought they might be able to milk another season from this cow, they added a lot of random new things, pulled things from later books and then had the gall to think I cared about any of it. I was halfway through the last one when I realised it would be more fun to write this. And it was.
Listen pal, when the terrible Alliyah movie was more enjoyable, christ, you know you fucked up somewhere. The terrible Jonathan Davis from Korn songs are better and they are not good in any way. At least it was mercifully short. Also I laughed a lot because it was so shit. As John Cage said, laughter is better than tears.
AMC’s The Vampire Lestat is both shit and pretentious, and has zero ideas outside of grief horror cliches and “Letstat is sexy!” - absolute coke logic as a show.
[Promotional shot from The Vampire Lestat (2026) copyright AMC]
In the interim does anyone want to make Pallynoz The Cabin Pirate? I promise Pallynoz will eat everyone’s face, that there is no metaphor, only face eating and will have a cool soundtrack written by someone who doesn’t hate music to its very core.
Please check out the great band Choir Boy who are great: