qz thoughtsQueen of the Damned
I knew little about this movie except the the skimpy costume the title character wears on the movie poster and the long remembered news about Aaliyah's death. Aaliyah was a R&B musician who plays the title character (aka Queen Akasha) and who died in a plane crash after filming ended (2001) but before the release (2002).
This movie concerns vampires in modern times. Akasha is a long dormant (portrayed as a statue) Egyptian vampire who is waking up because of the music played by another vampire, Lestat (Stuart Townsend). Many other vampires are unhappy about his purpose and methods. Akasha and her husband, presumably a pharoh, but only ever shown as a slumbering statue in this film, were extremely brazen in their time and a threat to vampires and the current vampire status quo.
Lestat is very happy to be waking Akasha as he's feeling lonely because of Reasons. There's this nice, pretty young woman, Jesse Reeves (Marguerite Moreau) investigating the musical group Lestat is in, because of Reasons. Lestat knows this and, more than doesn't care, he saves her from being prayed upon by other vampires, gives her information, and looks out for her in other ways.
Then a bunch of fights occur and a huge mob of goths at a concert get to watch one of the bigger fights. All the bad vampires are vanquished and the good ones live on. What makes a vampire good? Apparently feeling bad about killing people for food.
Aaliyah wears suprisingly little when on screen, but is not on screen all that much. Stuart Townsend does a lot of topless scenes. Vampires are pretty good at not spilling much blood when they kill people, but still always manage to get some on their chins. Also I'm not convinced any of the music here is good or bad enough to wake the (near) dead.
A guy from the band Korn wrote the music, a woman named Rice wrote the story the characters come from. Overall I'd rate this as two grains out of six servings.
Final thought: that guy from Korn has a cameo as a ticket scalper