Every decent album has an intro, and this review will have one too. The third season of "Interview with the Vampire" has been renamed "The Vampire Lestat", and that's a logical move. For two seasons straight, Louis told the story about this character — with his resentment, his pain, his version of the truth. Now Lestat has taken the microphone (literally and metaphorically) into his own hands, put together a rock band, and gone on tour to prove to everyone that this is HIS story. It turned out loud, chaotic, but impossible to tear yourself away. 

What it's all about

Formally, this season can be called a rock star biopic with touches of vampire motifs and flashy therapy sessions. Lestat (Sam Reid) puts together a band, tours, and along the way gives candid interviews to journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) for a documentary. In parallel, Lestat's mother Gabrielle (Jennifer Ehle) appears on screen, and somewhere in the background lurks a secret society that watches vampires as closely as paparazzi watch pop stars. 

Season tracklist (you could call it a review, but there you go)

01. "Charisma as a form of natural disaster" — ★★★★★

_(in the margins: UNDERLINE TWICE)_

Sam Reid doesn't play a charming vampire — he makes the entire frame obey him, as if it couldn't be any other way. It's some kind of top-notch audacity. He walks into a room — and the attention of the camera, scene partners, and, let's face it, the viewer, automatically transfers to his ownership. And when he starts to sing, it's simply breathtaking.

02. "Chronology told in a state of affect" — ★★★☆☆

But here I want to grab the series by the collar and ask: what was that? The jumps across the timeline have become even sharper than in previous seasons — and if earlier it worked as a device that added depth to the story, now it sometimes turns into outright confusion.

Following the plot is sometimes as "pleasant" as reading a book whose pages someone has shuffled.

03. "The picture that makes you forgive everything else" — ★★★★★

Costumes, lighting, cinematography — it all looks like it was shot simultaneously for a music video at the intersection of the 80s and 90s and for a glam rock photo shoot that would be discussed for a week in themed communities, like analyzing looks at the Met Gala.

Here you want to regularly hit pause, just to examine how Lestat's next costume shimmers in the light or how a new musical number was staged.

04. "Mom arrived, and everyone felt awkward" — ★★★★☆

Gabrielle's appearance is the best addition to the cast of characters for the entire season (and here we were also introduced to the Queen of the Damned herself, to whom the next season will be dedicated!). She alone manages what no one else can: to look at Lestat not as a legend or a monster, but as a wounded boy who played someone else for too long. It's only a shame that this storyline got less time than it truly deserves. However, this arc is maximally unnatural, so many viewers will be put off even in the presented form.

05. "Too much at once, welcome to my head" — ★★☆☆☆

Here we have to admit the unpleasant: seven episodes crammed in content that would have been enough for a couple of seasons. The secret society, the tour, the family drama, the psychological confession — each storyline is well thought out on its own, but together they keep elbowing each other for space on stage, and some of them regularly get hit on the back of the head like in a crowd at a multi-thousand concert.

Final track: the author's verdict

If this were an album, I'd call it brilliant in its absurdity: half the tracks you want to put on repeat and listen to until they're worn out, while the other half were clearly finished in the studio on energy drinks at four in the morning. But it's precisely in this roughness that there's some honest vampire charm — the season isn't afraid to be TOO loud, TOO beautiful, and TOO convoluted all at once, and that's why you want to rewatch it immediately, even while cursing the creators for the regular dizziness.

I advise watching it not as a series, but as a concert or a rock opera. Don't try to parse every note on the first listen, just let yourself be carried away by the flow of this unbridled energy. It'll be quite a ride.