‘Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire’ Season 2 Review – A Delicious Rampage Of A Guilt-torn Vampire

We are lucky to have a modern interpretation of Anne Rice’s gothic series, which creates a staple of what gothic homoerotic horror truly means. Season two of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire is everything we expect from the continuation of the Louis de Pointe du Lac tale. But this time, things get bloodier and darker.

The season continues where the first one left off. The interview continues between Daniel, Louis, and Armand. But in the past, Louis and Claudia roam post-WWII Europe. There he meets the Vampire Armand, the love of his life, and consequences -understandably- ensue.

The season captures how Rice envisioned vampirism, as a form of consumption of the soul, as an epic love story that spans ages and individuals. Vampirism is lust unrefined, a breed of sexuality that trespasses gender and existence. Rice’s vampires own each other in twisted, BDSM-coded love stories. The Theatre Des Vampires constitutes a culmination of these entities. A blending of artistry, sadism, and depravity, it reflects a chilling examination of the absurdist theater where reality and fiction collide, the fourth wall is broken, and everyone leaves happy, even the dead.

Without going into further details, the series molds Claudia’s character into one of the most exciting teen vampires anyone has ever witnessed. She’s more feral and unhinged, somber and inquisitive than before. The film never did her justice, as much as in the series where she is wildly given the time of her life, becoming herself in as intricate of a storyline as the adult vampires. Her transformation is both exquisite and more mature than one can anticipate for this particular character.

The second season returns with an even darker dab at humanity, and how grim and horrifying it can get. Through the undead, the mortals seem on an even shadier path, their complexities far more degrading and repulsive than those of the vampires roaming their world, secretly sniffing them for the next hunt or empowerment.

The series would have never survived or had a lasting legacy without the deliciously carnal performances of its cast. Delainey Hayles excels as Claudia, bringing remorseless energy to her character, giving her varying shades and dimensions beyond the first season. Jacob Anderson is brilliant as Louis and so is Assad Zaman as Armand. But as always, this epic would be nothing without the seductive, chilling, egotistical, and sadomasochistic performance of Sam Reid as Lestat. As Lestat is the prince of darkness of Interview with the Vampire chronicles, he is the crowned jewel of the undead, and for an actor to fully encompass his charisma. Reid is rizz manifested in a human being, and the command of his character’s feline, selfish personality is always a joy to behold.

The revelations of the season have come as a delightful surprise to the wandering eye. The theological discourse perfectly reflects the insides of Rice’s mind, where her struggles with faith and mortality always coexisted as she shifted between different concepts and varying degrees of an individually formed belief system. In a way, season two of Interview with the Vampire is all that. It’s the culmination of a racing mind, a representation of what it is like to be inside Anne Rice’s brain, with each of the characters representing a facet of her consciousness. Lestat is rebellion and freedom. Armand is power and control. Claudia is an insatiable childish curiosity. Louis is reserved, guilty of religiousness, and fear of the authoritative godly figure.

This series is not about vampires. It’s not True Blood or The Vampire Diaries, but a prolonged meditation of grief and the loss of faith in a godless world. And that in a bizarrely horrific way is where its strength lies.

Season two of Interview with the Vampire is currently available to stream on AMC+ with new episodes airing every Sunday.