The most unexpected Tom Cruise character needs no introduction, and he knows it, for the entire 123 minute run-time of this classic. It’s rare that a film’s final scene, final line, or final needle drop are the best. But in this beloved horror film, all three are the case. Back in 1994, before the movie star became known for stunts and running, Cruise let loose as a melodramatic, seductive, bloodsucking vampire second only to Dracula in infamy. To paraphrase Homer Simpson, every time he’s not on the screen you’re wondering where he is—making his jump-scare entrance in the coda all the more delicious.
This spooky season, you can revisit it in full. The 1994 film adaptation of Anne Rice‘s novelInterview with the Vampire, starringCruise as well as Brad Pitt, Kirsten Dunst, Christian Slater and Antonio Banderas, is now streaming on HBO Max. Thandiwe Newton and Stephen Rea also play supporting roles. Neil Jordan directed, and Rice herself wrote the screenplay. While the finished product is not necessarily considered the best adaptation of Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, it is a very re-watchable and very 90s film.
Cruise’s Lestat is not the protagonist of the film. That would be Pitt’s character, Louis de Pointe du Lac, a vampire recounting his life to a seemingly objective observer, Slater’s Daniel Molloy, as the gothic narrative plays out in flashback. Louis bemoans his immortal existence through various trials and tribulations: getting turned in the late 18th century, honing and occasionally eschewing his killer instincts, raising a vampire daughter (Dunst’s scene-stealing performance as Claudia), attempting to kill his maker, and worst of all, moving to Paris. The through line in his life post-death? Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat.
Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
Why Didn’t Tom Cruise Return for the ‘Interview with the Vampire’ Sequel?
Interview with the Vampire was well received. It made $223 million worldwide at the box office in its original release, according to Box Office Mojo, and was nominated for two Academy Awards despite mixed reviews from critics. However, when Warner Brothers went about making the sequel, titled Queen of the Damned after the third book in Rice’s series, Cruise did not reprise the role. “At the time,” Jordantold Entertainment Weeklyin 2024, Cruise simply “wasn’t doing sequels.” Now, from franchises like Mission: Impossible to legacy sequels like Top Gun: Maverickand the upcomingDays of Thunder, he can’t get enough.One can imagine that, if Cruise was doing sequels at the time, the second movie would have drawn more from Rice’s second book: The Vampire Lestat.
Queen of the Damned was eventually released in 2002 with Stuart Townsend in the role of the vampire Lestat. Despite a standout performance by singer and actress Aliyah, who tragically died ahead of the premiere, the film only brought in $45 million worldwide. Rice, who initially expressed doubt over Cruise in the role, later recanted and praised his performance. Society had and/would continue to move on to other vampire narratives like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twilight, True Blood, andThe Vampire Diaries.
Twenty-four years later, however, Rice fans are having a particularly good moment. AMC’s Interview with the Vampire, which stars Jacob Anderson, Sam Reid, Delainey Hayles, Eric Bogosian, and Assad Zaman, and restyled itself as The Vampire Lestat for Season 3, is set to return for a fourth season officially titledQueen of the Damnedwith Sheila Atim in the titular role as Akasha. The cable network’s other televised Rice adaptation, Mayfair Witches, returns for Season 3 in 2027, with Eliza Scanlen joining Alexandra Daddario in the cast.
Plus, there’s Tom Ford‘s upcoming film adaptation of Rice’s historical novel Cry to Heaven starring Nicholas Hoult, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Julianne Moore, Hunter Schafer,and Adele to look forward to in the near future. That movie is about the cutthroat (among other things) world of opera singers in 18th-century Italy, not monsters in the more traditional sense. But there’s never been a better time to be an Anne Rice fan.
