Interview with the Vampire

Empire Adam Smith

Bold, gruesome and melancholic, this Gothic horrorfest offers us much to sink our teeth into: Cruise - who effectively disappears from the screen for half the film's duration - is terrific, Dunst eerily compelling, Banderas hypnotic.

USA Today Mike Clark

The generally faithful script is by Anne Rice herself, the director is "The Crying Game"'s Neil Jordan, and both seem true to themselves and as true as they can be to artistic and visceral expectations. [11Nov1994 Pg. 01.D]

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

His sumptuous film is as strange and mesmerizing as it is imaginatively ghastly. It's a sophisticated, spookily intense rendering of Ms. Rice's story.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

But if you can get swept up in the story, the movie is imaginative and compelling.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A stronger plot engine might have drawn us more quickly to the end, but on a scene by scene basis, Interview with the Vampire is a skillful exercise in macabre imagination.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

When Interview with the Vampire works, it's as compelling and engrossing a piece of entertainment as is available on film today. When it falters, the weaknesses seem magnified.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

But for all its visionary brilliance, the movie version of Interview never lets us close enough to see ourselves in Louis. We're dazzled but unmoved.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The look is fine, the effects are special, the cast is solid, and Jordan (in company with Rice) makes a commendable effort to add a cerebral dimension to a visceral genre.

TV Guide Staff(not credited)

This darkly effective horror drama holds plenty of interest, even for those who find Anne Rice's gothic cult novels unreadable.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

It is, however, a very satisfying film, and surely the first in a long franchise (it does, after all, bear the subtitle The Vampire Chronicles).

Variety Todd McCarthy

But the film also has its turgid, dialogue-heavy stretches, and the leading performances, if acceptable, are not everything they needed to be to fully flesh out these elegant immortals.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Unfortunately, the story, adapted by Anne Rice from her best-selling novel, sucks at the neck a little too long. A 23-minute snipping from this 123-minute movie would have done wonders.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Although he works his hardest at the part and doesn't embarrass himself, even with the help of Stan Winston's vampire makeup Tom Cruise is plainly miscast as Lestat. [11Nov1994 Pg. F1]

The New Yorker Terrence Rafferty

The director, Neil Jordan, and his cinematographer, the great Philippe Rousselot, have given the movie an extraordinary seductive look, but Rice (who wrote the screenplay) doesn't provide enough narrative to keep the audience satisfied.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Dramatically, though, the film is torpid.

Dallas Observer Matt Zoller Seitz

Lestat, like all vampires, is a bad boy frozen in time; because the role is emotionally static and one-note, it can't hold our attention unless it's played by an actor with deep reserves of mystery, elegance, and sexual power. Cruise has no such qualities.

Time Richard Corliss

A vampire story needs vampires, sure, but it also needs a human victim to lead the audience into the vortex and help them escape it. Otherwise, the fear factor evaporates, and you get this mishmash: an interview in a void, a vampire movie with underbite.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Literal-minded to the last, I felt nothing but pity for Tom Cruise, fanged, wigged and costumed, trying hard with his considerable talent to make his sanguinary appetite real. [12Dec1994 Pg. 24]

Washington Post Rita Kempley

Passionately anticipated and much ballyhooed, the film, alas, is little more than a foppish, fang de siecle costume drama. Its pulse barely registers.