Reviews
“Interview with the Vampire” Season 2 Review – A Sublime Evolution of AMC’s Anne Rice TV Series
“Do you know what it means to be loved by death?”
Anne Rice is a prolific gothic horror novelist who has eternally changed the shape of vampire fiction. Anne’s literature has flourished for decades, but the film and TV adaptations of her best works have been a mixed bag. Many audiences were ready to dismiss Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire when it first premiered on AMC in 2022, only for it to rise from its grave as one of the year’s best series – horror or otherwise. Interview with the Vampire perfectly captures Rice’s painful pathos that uses the veil of supernatural storytelling and monstrous creatures to explore the human condition. Interview with the Vampire’s second season elevates its moving character development to greater heights and improves upon everything that already worked so well in its debut season. It’s the perfect evolution of this macabre, melancholy love story.
There’s genuine gravitas behind the pomp and circumstance of brutality and bloodbaths that powerfully kick off Interview with the Vampire’s new season. There’s such eloquent and baroque dialogue that’s juxtaposed against grisly, visceral imagery that perfectly captures Anne Rice’s decorated aesthetic. It’s the most important element of Interview with the Vampire and this season absolutely nails it. It’s why this show goes out of the way to call itself Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire rather than simply Interview with the Vampire.
Interview with the Vampire’s second season immediately grabs the audience by the throat and glamors them into submission. It’s gothic horror that holds itself up to the highest standards of beauty, not unlike Lestat himself. It’s fascinating to see how these episodes very much function as an extension to the first season. It’s the continuation of one big story, rather than simply a second season. These episodes are inextricably tied to the first season’s seven installments and it’d be a futile effort to try to jump in with the show’s second season. There’s something to be said for Interview with the Vampire’s complete disinterest in drawing in new viewers while it instead goes all-in on expanding its rich mythology and character development.
To this point, Interview with the Vampire’s second season handles Delainey Hawes’ Claudia recasting in an incredibly austere manner that makes this feel like a sophisticated stageplay. Season two’s eight episodes finish off the second-half of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire novel. While it’s unlikely that this will be the end of the series now that AMC is going all-in with their “Immortal Universe,” this would function as an excellent singular adaptation of one of Anne Rice’s most celebrated works if this were to be the series’ end.
There’s an electric energy to Interview with the Vampire’s second season that gets tremendous mileage out of the first season finale’s major revelation that Rashid (Assad Zaman) is actually Armand, a fellow vampire and Louis’ (Jacob Anderson) lover. These vampires’ mind games and toxic relationship dynamics are fully on display, although this time around they don’t purely apply to Lestat (Sam Reid). Interview with the Vampire gleefully indulges in this territory. Its mental manipulation reaches new heights as Louis descends to devastating new lows. Interview with the Vampire’s second season excels when it comes to the depths of Louis’ eternal sadness and struggles. Anyone who felt pangs of sympathy for him in season one will be absolutely gutted in season two. It’s a harrowing ride, but he’s hardly the only wounded fawn.
This season is thoroughly Louis and Armand’s story, but the narrative gradually morphs into an aberrant love triangle of sorts. Interview with the Vampire’s new episodes provide enlightening and crucial context on how Louis and Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) first met. On that note, the season’s fifth episode is the best hour that Interview with the Vampire has produced and an incredible accomplishment in television. It broke my heart in two and left me weak, drained, and dazed. It’s also shocking how this season’s interviews with Louis and Armand so naturally evolve into a twisted form of couple’s therapy where Daniel plays the role of mediator. It’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but with vampires.
Interview with the Vampire is melancholy and tragic, but there’s also such a playful, tongue-in-cheek sense of humor to all this, particularly when it comes to Daniel’s interjections to Louis and Armand’s storytelling. On the opposite end of the spectrum, this season features exceptional effects work – much of which is genuinely disturbing – that continues to expand upon the series’ supernatural universe in rewarding ways. This season’s visual horrors resonate just as strongly as the psychological ones.
Louis and Armand’s tortuous trip down memory lane digs up tales of Old World Vampires during World War II that operates as a macabre microcosm of inhumanity and insolence. The players may change and borders shift, but hatred and prejudice are eternal. In a world that’s full of supernatural threats and vampire hunters, sometimes human indifference and a broken heart can be the greatest danger and deterrent of all. Delainey Hawes absolutely shines as the new Claudia and she handles this role with as much confidence, charm, and pain as Bailey Bass brought to the character. Claudia’s theatrical performance has her repeat the refrain, “I don’t like windows when they’re closed.” Interview with the Vampire reflects the same philosophy through characters who seemingly want limitless options — even if their lots in life are technically restricted in several respects — as they fight for anything and everything that the world has to offer.
This season also spends a considerable amount of time on several characters’ indoctrination into the Parisian Theatre des Vampires. It’s an effective framework for this particular chapter of Louis and Armand’s story. These sequences are so staggeringly beautiful and a stunning distillation of what Interview with the Vampire represents. It’s such a unique breed of horror that could only be found in this series and harkens back to classical genre storytelling like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or the works of F.W. Murnau or Fritz Lang.
More than anything else, it’s just appreciated that Interview with the Vampire takes the time to indulge in such artistry. Another segment from the same episode feels like the horror stylistic equivalent to Moulin Rouge! and hits all the right notes. This material also becomes a stark representation of being trapped in a role that no longer fits and being resolved to go through the motions while longing for more. It’s a quandary that most vampire stories explore at one point or another, but Interview with the Vampire adds deeper layers to this obstacle. It adeptly taps into the light and darkness that makes vampires what they are.
Interview with the Vampire remains a uniquely special vampire horror story that’s unlike anything else that’s currently on television. It’s thought provoking, timeless, humanizing, and haunting. This season is such a beautiful reflection of what it means to love and truly live — even if the majority of its characters are dead. AMC will hopefully continue to let this interview run for as long as there’s breath in its lungs. It’s a powerful and important counterpoint to the horror genre that sucks blood from ambivalence and apathy so that it can truly take flight and soar.
Season 2 of ‘Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire’ premieres May 12th on AMC.
Rebooting and expanding upon Bryan Bertino’s chilling 2008 horror film in a brand new trilogy, all installments already shot as part of one continuous, overarching story, makes for one of the more ambitious horror endeavors as of late. It also means that The Strangers: Chapter 1 is only the opening act of a three-part saga. Considering it’s the entry most committed to recreating the familiar beats of Bertino’s film, Chapter 1 makes for a tricky-to-gauge, overly familiar introduction to this new expansion.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 introduces happy couple Maya (Madelaine Petsch) and Ryan (Froy Gutierrez) on their way to starting a new life together in the Pacific Northwest. Car troubles leave them stranded in the quirky small town of Venus, Oregon, where they’re forced to stay the night in a cozy but remote cabin in the woods.
Naturally, the deeply in love couple soon find themselves in a desperate bid to survive the night when three masked strangers come knocking.
Madelaine Petsch as Maya in The Strangers. Photo Credit: John Armour
Director Renny Harlin, working from a 289-page screenplay by Alan R. Cohen & Alan Freedland that was broken into three movies, keeps Chapter 1 mostly self-contained to recapture the spirit of the original film. The core remains the same in that it’s reliant on the eerie stalking and escalating violence that builds toward a familiar conclusion, but Harlin mixes it up a bit through details and set pieces that hint toward the larger story around Venus itself. The early introductory scenes establishing both the protagonists and their setting offer the biggest clues toward the subsequent chapters, with the bustling diner giving glimpses of potential allies or foes yet to come- like the silent, lurking Sheriff Rotter (Richard Brake).
One downside to announcing this as a trilogy is that we already know that the successive chapters will continue Maya’s story, robbing more suspense from a film that liberally leans into its predecessor for scares. The good news is that Madelaine Petsch brings enough layers to Maya to pique curiosity and instill rooting interest to carry into Chapter 2. Maya begins as the gentler, more polite half of the young couple in love, but there’s a defiance that creeps through the more she’s terrorized. On that front, Petsch makes Maya’s visceral fear tangible, visibly quaking and quivering through her abject terror as she attempts to evade her relentless attackers.
The Strangers – Chapter 1. Photo Credit: John Armour
It’s her subtle emotional arc and quiet visual hints toward the bigger picture that tantalize most in an introductory chapter meant to entice younger audiences unfamiliar with the 2008 originator. The jolts will have a harder time landing for fans of Bertino’s film, however, even when Harlin stretches beyond the cabin for stunt-heavy chase sequences or gory bursts of violence. It’s worth noting that Harlin’s tenured experience and cinematographer José David Montero ensure we can grasp every intricate stunt or chase sequence with clarity; there’s no worry of squinting through the dark, hazy woods to make out what’s happening on screen. A more vibrant color palette also lends personality to Venus and its residents.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 exists in a unique place in that it’s the first 90 minutes of what will amount to a roughly 4.5-hour movie yet doesn’t give much away at all about what’s ahead, presenting only part of the whole picture. Chapter 1 does a sufficient job laying the groundwork and delivering horror thrills but with a caveat: the less familiar you are with The Strangers, the better. Harlin and crew get a bit too faithful in their bid to recreate Bertino’s effective scares, even when remixing them, and it dampens what works. The more significant departures from the source material won’t come until later, but look to a mid-credit tease that sets this up.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 doesn’t establish enough of its own identity to make it memorable or set it apart, but it’s just functional enough to raise curiosity for where we’re headed next.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 releases in theaters on May 17, 2024.
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