‘The Vampire Lestat’ Review – A Chaotic and Mesmerizing Descent Into the Psyche

Sam Reid as Lestat De Lioncourt | Photo Credit: Sophie Giraud/AMC

So, you’re a centuries-old vampire, and your ex has granted a well-respected journalist a tell-all interview, resulting in a bestselling book that reveals all of your deepest and darkest secrets. What do you do? Well, if you’re the vampire Lestat, you hire that same journalist to make a documentary about your life as you tour the country with your new rock-and-roll band on a quest to set the record straight, of course. AMC’s hugely successful adaptation of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series continues with The Vampire Lestat—a bold, campy, horrific, and heartbreaking journey into the psyche of one of literature’s most beloved and over-the-top vampires. It’s everything you loved about the first two seasons of Interview With the Vampire, but given a rock-and-roll makeover and cranked to an eleven.

Lestat Takes Center Stage

In the aftermath of Interview With the Vampire’s second season, the vampires Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) and Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid) have begun rekindling their relationship. But the publication of Daniel Molloy’s (Eric Bogosian) interview with Louis throws a wrench into the heart of that reunion. Wanting to set the record straight, Lestat teams up with a rock band and sets out on an autobiographical nationwide tour, wrenching control of the narrative and casting a spotlight on all the darkest, raunchiest secrets of vampiric life. Joining Lestat are Daniel Molloy and a camera crew, set to document the tour as a filmic follow-up to Molloy’s book. It’s a recipe for disaster made only more complicated by the appearance of specters (both real and imagined) from Lestat’s past, haunting his psyche and threatening to derail his newfound fame and glory. What could go wrong?

While Louis’ interview in the first two seasons of Interview With the Vampire came across as a controlled, melancholic reflection, Lestat’s in The Vampire Lestat comes across as unbridled chaos in all the best ways. It’s all at once a borderline trashy VH1 Behind the Music-style documentary and a horrific gothic romance. On paper, it’s a combination that shouldn’t work, but in execution, it all feels perfectly suited for this version of Lestat. Led by Sam Reid’s electric, enthralling performance, The Vampire Lestat offers a whiplash-inducing journey across Lestat’s centuries-long existence, from his childhood and complicated relationship with his manipulative mother, Gabrielle (Jennifer Ehle), to his horrific and traumatic vampiric making at the hands of the abusive Magnus (Damien Atkins), all the way through his failed relationships and messy, messy 21st-century life.

A Chaotic Whirlwind Spinning Out of Control

At times, watching The Vampire Lestat feels like watching a breakdown in slow motion. The whole thing is a chaotic whirlwind spinning further and further out of control. At first, it’s a slow descent into madness, the beginnings of a tragedy etched on the wall. But as Lestat travels further into his psyche, desperately searching for some answer to why he is the way he is, he becomes more unmoored from reality. Specters of his past haunt him—muses, he calls them, but they’re something closer to hallucinogenic ghosts; echoes of his trauma and regret conjured up as both torture and revelation. In reflecting on himself, he becomes fractured, torn between his own desires for greatness and importance and those of those around him (namely Gabriella, who seems to have her own endgame in mind). What results is an utter whirlwind in the most chaotic of ways.

At times, it can be hard to follow exactly what’s going on since Lestat’s recollections come in waves that defy chronology. Louis’ tale in Interview‘s first two seasons played out mostly linearly, resulting in a more traditional narrative. But Lestat’s tale plays out far more unpredictably, a reflection of his inner chaos. Memories bounce back and forth across the years, often multiple times in the same episode, tied together more by theme than by narrative structure. It’s like looking through a kaleidoscope; it’s more about the feelings you experience than the raw details. As such, the show operates on a sort of dream logic, almost like listening to an album from start to finish. And on the whole, it works exceedingly well, even if the show would benefit from slowing down just a bit, especially in its earlier episodes, to let the weight of Lestat’s revelations really set in.

A Greater Look at the Vampiric World

The other major way The Vampire Lestat separates itself from Interview‘s first two seasons is how it opens up the world of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. By design, Interview is told almost exclusively through Louis’ eyes and experiences, and, as a result, we see very little of the world outside his perspective. That all changes in The Vampire Lestat. While much of the narrative remains tied to Lestat’s singular perspective, the show branches out to both continue some of the plot threads left dangling from Interview‘s second season and to hint at game-changing events to come. This season, Louis continues to struggle with his complicated feelings for Lestat and his guilt over Claudia’s (Delainey Hayles) death last season, Armand (Assad Zaman) tries to make amends for all the trauma he’s caused, and Daniel comes to terms with his life as a newborn vampire.

And beyond our core group lie glimpses at some of the vampires of old and their sagas—Lestat and Armand’s respective makers, Magnus and Marius (Christopher Heyerdahl), and even the Queen of the Damned herself, Akasha (Sheila Atim). There’s a mystery to these ancient beings that The Vampire Lestat merely scratches at the surface of, but their inclusion signifies a game-changing moment in the narrative of the entire series, an expansion of the world that feels both thrilling and terrifying. The way all of these storylines both intersect with each other and orbit Lestat’s makes for some genuinely thrilling and shocking television. As the season progresses and all of these storylines coalesce into a whole, you can feel the danger rising and the stage being set for what’s sure to be an explosive finale. But more on that in about seven weeks.

Final Thoughts

Until then, go into The Vampire Lestat expecting the unexpected. The whole season is beyond ambitious in scope, taking everything that worked about the quieter, introspective seasons of Interview and turning them into an audacious opera of sorts—a whirlwind orbiting a mysterious and catastrophic event that the first six episodes tease. Led by a breathtaking and vulnerable performance from Sam Reid, it’s both a continuation of Interview With the Vampire and something entirely new all at the same time. All at once a mesmerizing descent into the chaotic and complicated psyche of one of literature’s most beloved vampires and an audacious, operatic mash-up of trashy documentaries and operatic horror, it’s a show that demands your attention. Put simply, there’s nothing else quite like The Vampire Lestat. It’s a must-watch in every sense of the word, warts and all.

Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat debuts June 7th at 9pm on AMC and AMC+, with new episodes airing weekly through July 19th.