Tom Cruise’s 32 Year Old R-Rated Gothic Horror Is a Streaming Hit (And It’s Just as Great as the AMC Reboot) You Should Know
With a career spanning 45 years and counting, Tom Cruise has left his mark on just about every genre of film that Hollywood has to offer. He’s done everything from comedy, drama — several of his dramatic efforts receiving critical acclaim and even Academy Award Nominations — sci-fi and action, the latter of which he has truly established himself as a master of by frequently performing his own risky stunts. But one genre that Cruise perhaps hasn’t done as much work in is in horror, though it’s his divisive only real horror film that is without a doubt one of his best performances to date — and it’s a streaming hit that’s just as good as AMC’s more recent reboot.
Released in 1994, Interview With the Vampire might be Cruise’s most divisive film. An adaptation of Anne Rice’s iconic gothic horror novel of the same name (an adaptation that Rice herself penned), Cruise stars as the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt in the film. The story follows Louis de Pointe du Lac (Brad Pitt), a vampire telling his life story in the present day to a young reporter named Daniel Molloy (Christian Slater). He recounts how Lestat turned him, revealing a story that is seductive, ruthless, cruel, and dramatic in equal turns. The toxic, complicated relationship between Louis and Lestat is the core of the film and it’s a richly layered treat that recently returned to HBO Max and is already making its way back up the streamer’s charts.
Cruise’s Interview With the Vampire Is a Very Different Take From AMC’s Version But It’s Excellent
What makes the Interview With the Vampire movie so fascinating is that Cruise utterly defied expectation with the role. When he was cast as the sensual, charming Lestat, even Rice had serious doubts that he could pull off the role. She didn’t think that he had the right look (Lestat has a very specific blonde hair, blue eyed look that Cruise does not have) or the skills to do the character justice. Fans of the book were a little skeptical as well, but the actor more than delivered. His portrayal of Lestat — even as told through the lens of Louis’ story — is one layered with the pain and fear underneath the vampiric predator. The actor ultimately won over fans and Rice alike, so much so that Rice even wrote a letter praising Cruise’s work and noting that “others may play the role someday but no one will ever forget Tom’s version of it.”
She was certainly correct that others would play Lestat. When AMC acquired the rights to Rice’s novels to adapt for a television series, Sam Reid was cast as Lestat and there is no denying that Reid absolutely fully inhabits the iconic role. That said, there is ample room for both takes on the character. AMC’s series makes some significant changes to Rice’s story, shifting its timeline and its setting and brings Louis and Lestat into a more modern era in a way that works on its own merits. But that 1994 film and specifically Cruise’s Lestat remains perhaps the most purely distilled take on the dark, gorgeous horror Rice penned. Cruise delivered a performance that is less about vampires as creatures of horror and more about the real horrors of humanity beneath all the power of a predator. It’s iconic, it’s brilliant, and three decades on, it’s still one of Cruise’s best films ever.
Interview With the Vampire is now streaming on HBO Max.
