Interview with the Vampire Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Interview with the Vampire Blu-ray Movie Review

The Recycling Chronicles

For the twentieth anniversary of Neil Jordan's star-studded adaptation of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, Warner Home Video has missed yet another golden opportunity to improve on an early Blu-ray release that is showing its age. First released in 2008 with lossy audio on a BD-25, Interview sported a decent image for its era, but Blu-ray mastering, not to mention manufacturing capacity, has come a long way since then. Warner has upgraded the film's soundtrack to lossless audio, added one mediocre special feature (a 24-minute featurette) and shifted the entire affair to a BD-50, of which it has used just 33.5 GB. But it has used the same VC-1 encode as on the previous Blu-ray, without even bothering to remaster the existing transfer at the higher bitrate that all the wasted space on the disc would have permitted. This is a purchase solely for those who don't already own Interview. Everyone else should stick to their existing disc.

Interview with the Vampire Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Since the video is unchanged for this edition, please see the evaluation in the previous Blu-ray review.

Interview with the Vampire Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The previous Blu-ray's track was encoded in Dolby Digital at the top bitrate of 640 kbps, which Dolby claims is transparent to the master and which certainly did justice to Vampire's atmospheric sound mix and Eliot Goldenthal's moody score with its lightning shifts in tone and tempo. The new lossless DTS-HD MA track at least equals the previous version and at times (depending on your equipment and the acuity of your hearing) bests it in refinement and sonic detail. The new track also provides the comfort of knowing that you're getting every whisper and nuance contained on the master.

Interview with the Vampire Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

In addition to the extras discussed in the previous Blu-ray review, the disc offers a new retrospective featurette, Lestat, Louis and the Vampire Phenomenon (1.78:1; 1080i; 24:06), featuring Jordan, Rice, Cruise (in vintage interview footage) and a host of academics discussing the place of the film (and novel) in the history of vampire fiction.

Interview with the Vampire Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Warner's latest Blu-ray of Interview with the Vampire is a poor excuse for a double-dip, a lazy reissue that squanders an opportunity to improve the existing presentation. We have seen enough examples (The Road Warrior and Blazing Saddles come to mind) to know that an existing transfer can look noticeably better simply by being remastered and re-encoded, preferably with AVC at a higher bitrate than was used on the initial disc of Interview, but apparently even that minimal effort has fallen victim to cost-cutting. Not recommended.