Let AMC’s ‘Interview With the Vampire’ Seduce You While It’s Streaming on Max

Every so often a television show comes along that truly haunts you. It stays with you long after the credits on the final episode of the season airs, inspiring your daydreams and torturing your nights in the most delicious way. For me, AMC‘s Interview with the Vampire is that show. From Sam Reid and Jacob Anderson‘s bewitching performances as star-crossed vampire lovers Lestat and Louis (respectively) to the show’s seductive mix of the comic and the macabre, the latest attempt to adapt Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles is far and away my favorite. Interview with the Vampire is a decadent, sensual, and gory show that just so happens to make for the perfect spooky season binge while it’s streaming on Max until the end of the month.

Created by Rolin Jones, AMC’s 2022 version of Anne Rice’s beloved tale starts things off in the present, post-pandemic day. Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) is no longer an aspiring ’70s journalist angling for a supernatural scoop from the mysterious Louis. Instead, he is an iconic reporter who teaches Masterclasses and misses his kids. When his old interview subject reaches out to him for a redo on his life story, Molloy skeptically goes along. Emphasis on the skepticism.

We learn through the clever narrative technique that carries us between the present day interviews and Louis’s memories, that this version of Louis de Point du Lac isn’t an 18th century plantation owner, but an ambitious 1910s New Orleans pimp who happens to be both Black and closeted. Louis’s life changes when he crosses paths with the enigmatic French vampire Lestat de Lioncourt. Lestat seduces Louis thrice over: first as a friend and confident, then as a lover, and finally as a fellow monster. Lestat transforms Louis into a vampire and the men immediately become both the center and the bane of each other’s existence.

What follows is a gorgeous gothic tale of romance and heartache, sin and shame, and, most of all, domestic discord. Within a few years, the bickering lovebirds welcome a third to their fucked up family: a young girl named Claudia (Bailey Bass) whom Lestat saves from death with his vampire kiss at Louis’s insistence. She becomes a daughter to them both, in the most toxic and most beautiful ways.

Eventually it is Claudia who drives the ultimate wedge between the men, but before that, viewers are privileged to watch some of the most intoxicating drama I’ve seen in years. The scripts deliciously blend poetry and camp, horror and romance. Sam Reid and Jacob Anderson make choices as actors that make you feel like you’re simultaneously experiencing universal trauma and the emotional maelstrom that only a creature of the night could understand. Bailey Bass is pure magic (which is why it’s a bummer she’s being recast for Season 2). Interview With the Vampire is just spooky, sexy, surprising brilliance.

Which is why I’m begging you to either try it out for the first time or let it wash over you once more while it’s streaming for a limited time on Max.

Interview With the Vampire is streaming on Max now through October 31.