NEW YORK (Top40 Charts) - Though she's not utilized nearly enough,
Aaliyah has little trouble stealing every scene in which she appears, in her last film, the campy
Queen of the Damned, which opens Friday (Feb. 22).
Why? Well, she might be surrounded by legions of the undead, but the late singer, who died in a plane crash in August 2001, handily proves that she's the baddest vampire of them all.
Queen of the Damned is part of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles series. The vampire Lestat de Lioncourt (Stuart Townsend), asleep for a few centuries, finally awakens, and parlays his goth appearance into fame as rock star. His music in turn awakens the Egyptian vampire queen Akasha (Aaliyah), who arises to join in the fun.
Aaliyah doesn't make her first appearance until midway through the film, but it's well worth waiting for. Accompanied by fireballs and lots of wanton destruction, clad in a skimpy, supposedly Egyptian-influenced costume, skin burnished into a metallic gold, Aaliyah undulates across the screen like a malevolent snake. She's one of those villains who's so compelling you just can't take your eyes off her -- a more vicious Cruella de Vil for the 21st century.
Her appearance at a massive rock concert in Death Valley (inspired by the Burning Man events) has her whizzing through the air knocking off a slew of vampires in the best action hero tradition; her seduction of Lestat is creepily sexy; and she revels in her bloodlust with delight -- when Lestat asks why she wants to rule over a kingdom of corpses she tartly replies "Why not?"
Aaliyah was set to appear in the next two Matrix sequels before her death last year, and Queen of the Damned shows she could've easily built a second career in acting, even though her brother had to finish some of her dialogue after she died.
The film also features original songs co-written by Korn's Jonathan Davis (who has a brief cameo as a ticket scalper) and Richard Gibbs. While Davis provides Lestat's singing voice in the film, lead vocals on the soundtrack album are handled by others, including Static X's Wayne Static, Orgy's Jay Gordon, Disturbed's David Draiman, Linkin Park's Chester Bennington, and, unsurprisingly, given the film's theme, Marilyn Manson. The soundtrack was released Tuesday (Feb. 19) on Warner Sunset Records/Warner Bros. Records/Reprise Records.
Queen of the Damned is unabashedly cheesy. But in the best tradition of vampire movies, it's also a bloody good time. And it's Aaliyah who gets to have most of the fun.
