Interview with the Vampire

In present-day San Francisco, journalist Daniel Molloy sits down with a pale young man named Louis who claims to be a vampire two centuries old. The film unfolds as Louis tells his story.

In 1791 Louisiana, Louis is a young plantation owner suicidal after losing his wife and child in childbirth. The vampire Lestat finds him on the docks, offers him immortality, and turns him. Louis is repulsed by the killing required to live and tries to subsist on rats and other animals; Lestat mocks him and feeds gleefully on humans in front of him. Their slaves grow suspicious; the plantation burns and the pair flees to New Orleans, where Louis stalks the streets unable to kill. During a plague outbreak he enters an apparently empty house and finds a small girl, Claudia, weeping over her dead mother. Lestat tracks him there and turns Claudia to bind Louis to him — a vampire daughter who will never leave them.

The three live as a family in New Orleans for thirty years. Claudia ages mentally but her body remains frozen at five or six; the dissonance curdles into rage at Lestat for trapping her. She lures him with a boy whose blood she has laced with laudanum, slashes his throat as he weakens, and helps Louis dump him in the swamp. Louis and Claudia book passage to Europe.

In Paris they find Armand and his Théâtre des Vampires — a coven who perform their feedings on stage for human audiences who believe it is theatre. Armand is drawn to Louis; Claudia, sensing they may separate, asks Louis to turn the mortal doll-maker Madeleine so she will have a mother. Louis complies. The Théâtre coven, having learned of Lestat's murder, abducts the three: Claudia and Madeleine are sealed in an open-air courtyard and burned to death at dawn; Louis is locked in a coffin to starve. Armand frees him. Louis returns to the theatre, sets it ablaze, and kills the troupe — including their leader Santiago — with a scythe.

Louis travels Europe with Armand, but the older vampire's detachment empties him out. He drifts alone for a century, eventually returning to New Orleans. He finds Lestat still alive, withered and broken, hiding in an abandoned mansion and surviving on rats. Louis leaves him there.

The frame closes. Daniel, intoxicated by the story, begs Louis to turn him; Louis refuses and vanishes. Driving home in panic later that night, Daniel finds Lestat — restored and smiling — already in the passenger seat. Lestat sinks his teeth into Daniel's throat as the camera pulls back over the Golden Gate Bridge and a cover of 'Sympathy for the Devil' plays.