Common Sense Media Review
By Marty Brown
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Modern vampire adaptation explores race, sexuality.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 15+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Watch
Videos and Photos
Interview with the Vampire
What's the Story?
Interview with the Vampire begins when Louis de Pointe du Lac agrees to tell his story to an aging journalist (Eric Bogosian). Louis (Jacob Anderson) became a vampire in the early 20th century, and has had a long, complicated relationship with the vampire Lestat (Sam Reid), with many twists and turns along the way.
Is It Any Good?
It helps to have a strong reason to adapt a nearly 50-year-old novel for contemporary television, and this series almost fully succeeds. With Interview with the Vampire, the creators saw an opportunity to explore themes of sexual identity by taking the erotic subtext from Anne Rice's books and making it overt. It's unfortunate that those themes tend to stay mostly surface-level as the story unfolds, because Interview has a lot of other things going for it. Clever writing choices (like spending time on Louis's pre-vampire family) and a deep cast, featuring a strong, anchoring performance from Jacob Anderson, make Louis and Lestat's expanded backstory consistently compelling, even if the series' purpose doesn't seem to completely pay off.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about vampires. In this world, what is the relationship between vampires and humans? How are vampires perceived over time? What are some differences between the contemporary times (when the interview takes place) and the historical times portrayed in Louis' story?
What does Louis think of Lestat? How does his perception of Lestat change over time? How does that affect their relationship?
How does meeting Lestat change Louis' sense of himself? How does his sense of self evolve over time? What are the barriers to finding and expressing his true self? Does he overcome them?
TV Details
- Premiere date : October 2, 2022
- Cast : Jacob Anderson , Sam Reid , Eric Bogosian
- Network : AMC
- Genre : Drama
- TV rating :
- Last updated : April 19, 2024
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