First, I want to make it clear that I never read the book or any Anne Rice book, for that matter. Which, ultimately, is irrelevant since the book is not the movie, and the movie is not the book.
That being said, I did not like this. All that is keeping the film from being a Full Moon vampire movie is the budget. The acting, and the dialog are the primary issues; there are some dodgy special effects, but I'd want to cut a little slack since this was made in 2002.
If the movie existed in a vacuum, it would still be bad, but then you understand that it is in the same universe as _Interview with the Vampire_ (1994) - one of my favorite vampire movies - and it adds another layer of disappointment. Seriously, we go from Tom Cruise to Stuart Townsend... are you kidding?
Maybe the biggest problem for me was the overall plot: Lestat becomes a rockstar. Are you kidding? There's only one vampire rockstar and his name is _Rockula_ (1990). Just a stupid story, and it really detracts from what the movie actually needed to be about: Akasha.
So, the movie is titled _Queen of the Damned_, yet this is not about her. Why? She doesn't show up until the midpoint of the film, and all she does it wiggle and speak in a bad accent - what was it supposed to me anyway, Romanian? Russian? French?
The only positive for me was the soundtrack: totally nu metal. Almost all of the songs are sung by Jonathan Davis - who gets a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo - such a missed opportunity to exchange the vocals for other nu-metal singers on the official soundtrack. _Queen of the Damned_ could have been the best album Korn ever made.
Anyway, Korn rules, but this movie is terrible. I'd say to give this a huge skip, unless you're a fan of the _Twilight_ (2008-2012) series, but wish it had the 2000s cool of the _Underworld_ (2003-2016) series. Even in that light, I'd rather watch all of the _Twilight_ movies again than watch _Queen of the Damned_ a second time, and so there's no confusion, I did not like _Twilight_ either.