A young man becomes a vampire after an encounter with one of the most ruthless vampires in the world. After he grows accustomed to his new powers, he realizes that it’s not what he thought it was and ends up living a life of regret and suffering.

Even when I first saw this film in the theaters, I always felt that something was off with it. It wasn’t bad, but I still can’t say I enjoy it. I also still struggle explaining what I didn’t like about it. After watching it again on Blu-ray, I think my problem with the film is that it was an epic “near-miss” on virtually every level.

First, the actors all did fine jobs, but all stopped short of giving great performances. I think Tom Cruise did a fantastic job, but there were times when I felt he broke character and overacted as Lestat. In one scene, he’s a normal guy that happens to be a vampire and in the next, he seems like he was shot out of a Shakespeare play. As much as I like Brad Pitt, he fell into the same trap by portraying his character with a little inconsistency. At times he was whiny to the point of annoying and others he seemed more confident and powerful, but not in a sequence that makes sense. All the other characters did a fine job with what they had.

I also feel that the directing was pretty poor. Neil Jordan is a talented director, but he seemed to struggle a little bit here. One of the problems was with the very bad musical score that became distracting, especially during intense sequences. The transitions were poor and choppy at times, which distracted from the story.

As for the script, it also struggled. I can imagine that they had a hard time trying to convert Ann Rice’s novel into a screenplay. There are so many details and plots that they had to leave out, otherwise they would have made a four hour movie, or longer. The problem is that there really is no in-between when you’re converting novels to screenplays. You either go like LORD OF THE RINGS and have virtually everything (yes, I know they left some stuff out) or you go like HARRY POTTER where you strip it down and focus on the important points. But the difference there is that those are long franchises. Vampire didn’t have that benefit. So the movie felt like they inserted ideas and plots, but never fully developed them and therefore, the movie lost focus too many times. I would have liked to see it focus solely on Louis and Lestat and their relationship. Once the other characters got involved, the movie got distracted.

Video: Widescreen (1.85:1): I was a little disappointed in the Blu-ray transfer and this is not one of the better looking films on the format. Black levels still seemed a little faded and it lacked the usual Blu-ray crispness and consistency.

Audio: English and French 5.1, Spanish and English 2.0 with English, French and Spanish subtitles: I have to give a big “boo” to WB for not including a lossless audio track.

Commentary with Neil Jordan: Jordan gives a fine commentary here and manages to keep the track rolling despite doing it by himself. He focuses a lot on the efforts put into the settings and locations, but I would have liked more information on the major stars involved. It’s a good listen, but there seemed to be things that he glossed over.

In the Shadow of the Vampire (29:27): All of the major players show up for this pedestrian making of featurette. It’s not bad, but it’s just your average bits about the production on the film and then the actors give their thoughts on vampires and the genre in general. Obviously, a lot has changed in the genre since this was filmed, so a lot of their comments are outdated.

There is also a Trailer

I see no reason to upgrade you DVD copy of Interview to this Blu-ray. If you haven’t seen the movie, I don’t think you’re missing much. It’s an underwhelming picture with an underwhelming Blu-ray transfer.