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“Torture Porn” Is a Term Critics Invented to Avoid Thinking About Hostel

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2 months ago

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On April 28, 2004, CBS aired the Abu Ghraib photographs on 60 Minutes II. The images showed American soldiers in a prison outside Baghdad, grinning, posing, giving thumbs up next to naked Iraqi prisoners stacked in human pyramids. The story had been circulating for months in reports that nobody in power seemed particularly motivated to act on. Seeing the photographs was different. They made undeniable something the country had been quietly working to keep abstract: the United States was torturing people, and the people running the program looked genuinely unbothered about it.

Six months later, in October 2004, Saw opened in theaters. $18 million opening weekend on a $1.2 million budget. Then Hostel in January 2006, making $47 million domestic on $4.8 million. And then, right around the time Hostel was still running in theaters, film critic David Edelstein published a piece in New York Magazine that handed everyone a way to stop thinking about both films at once. He called the genre “torture porn,” and the phrase stuck the way only the most convenient phrases do.

It moved the films into the category of things decent people don’t engage with. Porn isn’t a genre in Edelstein’s framing. It’s a verdict. Once the verdict lands, you don’t have to do anything else. No argument required.

Which is a problem, because these films were made in a very specific moment in American history, by directors who were paying attention, and what they were doing deserves more than a pass.

The Label Arrived After the Films Had Already Said Something

Here’s the thing that keeps nagging at me when this subject comes up. The timing. Saw came out in October 2004. The Devil’s Rejects hit in July 2005. Wolf Creek and High Tension the same year. Hostel in January 2006. Edelstein’s New York Magazine piece (the one that coined “torture porn”) also ran in January 2006, weeks after Hostel opened.

The films existed first. The label arrived after the fact, applied retroactively to a body of work that was already done, already finding audiences. The critics didn’t stop the genre. They gave audiences a framework for feeling superior about not watching it, which is a different and somewhat less impressive accomplishment. The Splat Pack, a label British film journalist Alan Jones coined in Total Film around the same time for Eli Roth, Rob Zombie, Alexandre Aja, Neil Marshall, and Greg McLean, had already done the work. The moral panic came after.

And here’s what nobody covering the genre at the time seemed willing to say plainly: these directors were making these films in 2004 and 2005, inside an America that was having a loud, public, genuinely uncomfortable argument about whether the government was allowed to torture people. That argument was on the Senate floor, on cable news, in newspapers, at dinner tables. The critics who dismissed these films for being too fixated on suffering somehow couldn’t see the connection between what was on the screen and what was on the front page. This is either a remarkable failure of critical attention or a very deliberate choice to look elsewhere.

What the Country Was Actually Doing at the Time

We tend to soft-pedal how strange the 2001 to 2006 period actually was, partly because enough time has passed that it starts to feel abstract. So let’s be specific about it.

After September 11, the Bush administration authorized what it officially called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a phrase that covered waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation lasting for days at a stretch, and other methods that most of the world’s legal systems classify as torture. The program was classified. The public framing was that these measures were limited, carefully administered, and necessary. Then Abu Ghraib happened, and the photographs showed something that no official framing had prepared anyone for. American soldiers, cheerful and casual, posing with prisoners in conditions that narrowed the gap between “enhanced interrogation” and the thing you actually see in those images down to almost nothing.

The official response split immediately. President Bush called the Abu Ghraib abuses “a stain on our country’s honor” in a May 2004 address. Dick Cheney took a different position, one he never really walked back. Asked years later about waterboarding, he said it was “absolutely” justified. In a 2014 NBC interview he was unambiguous about the whole program: “I’d do it again in a minute.” This wasn’t a fringe view. The administration made sustained, formal arguments that certain detainees didn’t qualify for the same protections as others, that some suffering was a reasonable cost, that the ends justified it.

Senator John McCain, who had personally been tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and knew the subject from a direction Cheney did not, sponsored the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which prohibited cruel and degrading treatment of detainees. The Bush White House opposed it. McCain got it passed anyway.

That’s the specific country Saw and Hostel were released into. Not a vague cultural unease. A named, active, very public argument about what the American government was permitted to do to a human body, and whether the people doing it were heroes or war criminals. Horror decided to take that argument seriously. The mainstream critical establishment, apparently, did not.

What Saw Was Actually Doing

Saw predates Abu Ghraib in one genuinely interesting way. James Wan and Leigh Whannell wrote the original script in 2001, before the torture debate became a front-page story. They weren’t consciously making a political film. They were making a movie about a killer who traps people and forces them to choose between surviving and giving up. That’s horror. Character under pressure, consequences made physical.

But watch it in context and the film’s internal logic starts pressing on something uncomfortable. Jigsaw doesn’t think of himself as a torturer. He’s someone who runs a test, giving people the chance to prove they actually want the life they’ve been wasting. The suffering isn’t the punishment. It’s the proof. You are put in a trap because you have sinned, and the trap is proportionate to the sin. The framework is almost Calvinist: your situation is your own fault, and what you do with it reveals who you really are.

This is also, uncomfortably, the framework the Bush administration used to justify enhanced interrogation. Not torture. A process. A necessary measure that, whatever it looked like from the outside, was ultimately about something the detainee brought on themselves. The person controlling the situation gets to define the terms. The person in the trap doesn’t get a vote. If they suffer, that’s a function of their choices, not the jailer’s.

The franchise that followed gradually stopped being interested in that logic and became interested mainly in the contraptions, which is a less compelling thing. But the first film holds up as something tighter and more unsettling than its reputation allows. The question the movie keeps returning to, whether this person deserves what’s happening to them, is not a neutral question to raise in an American theater in October 2004.

What Hostel Is Actually About

Hostel is the more nakedly political film and the one that got treated most unfairly by the label.

Eli Roth’s film, if you actually watch it rather than react to the premise, is about a specific kind of American arrogance. The protagonists are loud, entitled, treating Eastern Europe as a backdrop for their own pleasure, incapable of imagining that the people around them have perspectives of their own. They aren’t innocent. They’re oblivious, which in the world of the film turns out to be more dangerous. The horror doesn’t come from being in the wrong place. It comes from having operated for so long as if their nationality was a kind of armor, and discovering that it isn’t.

The reveal (that there is an organized market for torturing tourists, with membership fees and price tiers broken down by nationality) gets described as a shock premise. It’s actually a precise economic metaphor. Americans cost more to participate because they’re valued more by the system; American lives have been assigned a higher dollar amount by the global hierarchy these men have always benefited from. And then the logic inverts: Americans also cost more to purchase as victims, for exactly the same reason. The film is about what happens when the people at the top of a hierarchy get fed into the machinery of that hierarchy from the other direction.

Scholars who have taken the film seriously (and there are several, which suggests the dismissal left real work undone) have read it as a film about the commodification of suffering inside a global economy, about who gets to participate in violence and who becomes the product. That reading holds. And it arrives with uncomfortable timing: the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program, which involved transferring detainees to countries where harsher treatment was available, was not yet fully public when Hostel was in production. By the time the full scope of it emerged, the film had already beaten it to theaters.

Calling this “torture porn” means deciding the film has no argument, only appetite. It means treating the suffering on screen as the product rather than the subject. And once that frame is in place, you don’t have to engage with what the film is actually doing. You can just walk out.

Why the Dismissal Mattered

Horror has a reliable pattern of processing anxieties the rest of the culture isn’t ready to face directly. This is practically the first thing anyone says about the genre in a serious critical context, and it’s true enough that it’s worth sitting with what it actually means in practice rather than treating it as a given. Night of the Living Dead was cast and shot in ways that landed differently in 1968 than they would have a decade earlier. The Thing asks its audience to sit with the impossibility of knowing who to trust during a period when that question had a very specific political charge. Horror carries the freight other genres can put down.

The 2004–2006 window was exactly that kind of moment, and the “torture porn” label foreclosed the conversation at the worst possible time. By 2006, when Edelstein’s piece ran, the country was three years into the Iraq War, two years out from Abu Ghraib, and actively, unresolvedly arguing about what the government was permitted to do to a prisoner. Horror was processing that argument in real time, as it has always done with the things the culture most wants to look at sideways. The critical class looked away instead. They found a phrase that performed distaste without requiring any actual engagement, and they used it, and the films got buried under a reputation they’ve spent two decades trying to get out from under.

None of this is an argument that every Splat Pack film is good or that the Saw sequels deserve a full critical examination. Some of these movies really are just interested in the gore, and that’s a legitimate thing for a horror film to be interested in, and the genre has always had room for films whose only goal is testing how much the audience can take. That’s fine.

But Hostel is not that film, and Saw is not entirely that film. They were made by people who were living in a specific country at a specific time, paying attention to what that country was doing and what it was telling itself about what it was doing. The squirming the films produced in their audiences was not a side effect. It was the argument.

The critics didn’t want to feel it. So they named it something else and moved on.

The thing they were pointing at, for the record, was us.

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Editorial

Sleepaway Camp Knew Before I Did: The Legacy Johnathan Tiersten Left on Queer Media

Published

4 days ago

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May 9, 2026

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Jonathan Tiersten died May 5 at his home in New Jersey. He was 60. He played Ricky Thomas in Sleepaway Camp, and I want to explain why a very specific group of people is taking this one harder than a 1983 summer camp slasher would usually warrant.

What The Film Means To Me

I am trans. That goes on the table first because nothing else I am about to say makes any sense without it.

I have been showing Sleepaway Camp to people since I was eleven years old. Everyone who mattered to me has sat through it. Friends who thought slashers were beneath them, partners who loved me enough to watch things they would never have chosen, my teenagers.

I give the same speech before every single viewing. Something is going to happen in the last few minutes, I tell them, and whatever your first reaction is, please sit with it for a moment before you say it out loud. Not because the reaction is wrong. Because there is almost always a second reaction underneath it and that is the one I am actually interested in.

What The Film Actually Is

Robert Hiltzik made a low-budget slasher set at a summer camp. Angela Baker is strange and barely verbal and is tormented by basically everyone around her while her cousin Ricky tries to run interference. The ending reveals that Angela was born Peter, that her father died when she was small, and that the aunt who took her in had always wanted a girl and simply decided Peter would become one.

Angela did not choose any of this. Not her name, not her clothes, not the gender she was made to perform in front of every single person she encountered every single day. And after years of living inside something she never chose, the pressure found somewhere to go.

That Ending

The transness is framed as the horror, as the explanation for the violence, and there is nothing there any trans person would hold up as a victory for representation. I understand all of that.

But I was eleven when I first watched it, and what I heard underneath everything it was trying to do was something nobody was trying to say. If you force someone to live as the wrong thing long enough, they will eventually stop being able to contain what that costs them. The film turned that into a monster story. I recognized it as a thing I had been trying to explain to myself without having the words for it yet.

Trans Representation In Pop Culture

For context, consider what came the year after. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective came out in 1994 and its treatment of a trans character is a two-minute sequence of Jim Carrey vomiting, using a plunger on his own face, burning his clothes, and sobbing under running water upon learning he had kissed her. The joke is that she is contamination.

My classmates quoted this film back at me for years. That was what mainstream culture had decided trans people were good for, and it went more or less unchallenged for a long time. Angela Baker, for all of Sleepaway Camp’s genuine limitations, is the protagonist of her entire film. Her history is the engine of the whole story. She is not a punchline. She is why the movie exists.

Trans representation in horror has never been particularly good, and I am not about to argue Sleepaway Camp is the exception. What I will say is that it accidentally told the truth in the middle of trying to do something else entirely, and horror films that stumble into the truth are still telling the truth. I have built twenty-five years of love for this movie on that.

Ricky

Ricky is most of the reason I keep coming back, which brings us to Jonathan Tiersten. He played Ricky as someone who never needed to understand Angela in order to be fully in her corner. He does not study her. He does not puzzle her out, he just shows up every time with the kind of furious loyalty that does not require an explanation because the explanation is right there. He loves his cousin, and he is not going to stand there while the world is unkind to her. That is not a complicated thing to put on screen. It is also rarer on screen than it should be.

Tiersten reprised the role in Return to Sleepaway Camp in 2008 and kept working in independent horror until the end. His most famous performance is forty-five minutes of a teenager planting himself between his cousin and everything the world wanted to do to her, and for some of us who grew up watching this film, that was the first time we saw someone treat that as simply the obvious right thing to do.

It was an answer to a question I had not yet figured out how to ask.

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Editorial

HHN35, Jack vs Oddfellow: Place Your Bets!

Published

2 weeks ago

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May 1, 2026

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Halloween Horror Nights is back for its 35th installment at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida as the Infernal Carnival of Nightmares!

Over the years HHN has proven original houses draw as much of a crowd, if not more, as the intellectual property (IP) houses based off of established horror movies. 

Leading each year of fear and headlining some of these original houses includes some of the most beloved and iconic characters. These icons include; Jack the Clown, The Caretaker, The Director, Chance, Dr. Oddfellow, The Usher, Lady Luck, and The Storyteller.

This year Orlando’s convention MegaCon had a highly anticipated and attended panel focused on Universal Studio’s Halloween Horror Nights 35. The masterminds speaking of the 35th year celebration included Michael Aiello, Lora Sauls, and Charles Gray. The creators teased the landmark year to salivating fans.  

Gaged by the audience’s reaction as each icon was reminisced about and displayed on the panel’s screen were Jack and Oddfellow. Here it was announced to the fanatical audience that these two icons will be returning to lead Halloween Horror Nights into its upcoming year!

Bring in the Clown!

Jack the Clown, born Jack Schmidt, is an icon created by Universal Studios for Halloween Horror Nights. Jack made his debut during the Halloween event’s tenth year in 2000. He immediately won over attendees and became a fan favorite. His popularity grew so much that he has reappeared again and again in many of the Halloween Horror Nights events.

Jack “The Clown” Schmidt.

Jack has been featured in three of the five Universal parks that have hosted HHN; Orlando, Hollywood, and Singapore. He has even claimed a spot in Universal Horror Unleashed. 

Unleashed is a haunted attraction residing in Las Vegas that offers a fully immersive experience for guests. Unlike Halloween Horror Nights, this attraction is open year round! Universal Horror Unleashed features haunted houses, live entertainment, and themed bars and dining.

Jack and Chance at Universal Horror Unleashed in Las Vegas.

Here Jack stalks guests year round with his mistress in mayhem, Chance.

Jack’s History

In the late 1800s Jack was born with his brother Eddie inside the walls of Shady Brook Rest Home and Sanitarium. Jack escaped and ran away with the circus, leaving his poor and abusive family behind. 

However, it was soon apparent he was not the jolly, entertaining clown he convinced his carnival spectators of. 

Jack “The Clown” Schmidt.

Jack was a child murderer. As the traveling sideshow made its way through the southern states, a trail of abductions and disappearances followed. This attracted unwanted attention from federal authorities.

As the feds closed in, the clown disclosed his murderous ways to his employer, carnival owner Dr. Oddfellow. As the star attraction of the circus he hoped Oddfellow would hide him. However, the doctor was a man with his own sordid past with the law. He decided the best plan of action would be to cut ties with Jack, for good.

The circus owner had Jack Schmidt murdered, but not before the clown gave Oddfellow his trademark facial scar. A scar none of Oddfellow’s dark magic could erase.

Always the showman, Oddfellow decided Jack’s time in his show had not yet come to an end. Not even in death. The carnival owner hid Jack’s body, in addition to the thirteen children the clown had killed, inside his House of Horrors.

The Doctor is In!

Just like Jack “The Clown” Schmidt, Dr. Rich Oddfellow has a very long and evil history. He was introduced to Halloween Horror Nights in 2000, the same year as Jack. However, unlike the menacing clown, the doctor did not rise to instant fame.

Finally the Doctor found his time in the fog and in 2023 he was established as an icon of HHN. 

Oddfellow’s History

Dr. Oddfellow is the notorious, darkly charismatic sideshow owner of Dr. Oddfellow’s Carnival of Thrills. He employed Jack Schmidt, the murderous clown who claimed the lives of at least 13 children. However, the clown was not the only member of the circus who had evil intentions.

Oddfellow was an evil sorcerer, and preyed upon his unsuspecting spectators from town to town. Using the souls of his victims, Oddfellow hoped to gain immortality as well as harness the power of the Dark Zodiac for himself. With this power he would have undying power at his fingertips all harnessed in the skull sitting on top of his trademark cane.  

Dr. Oddfellow always left his mark of chaos, destruction and death. From the Jungle of Doom, to the 1939 Dustbowl, and an infamous 1969 Music Festival in upstate New York, Oddfellow reigned down his evil upon the innocent.

A Glimpse of HHN35

Not much has been revealed about how these icons of horror will be intertwined in the upcoming Halloween Horror Nights. However, we do know that despite how much these two despise each other, they will be sharing the spotlight as co-hosts for the much anticipated HHN35.

One of the ten haunted houses will feature the returning duo together. The house is called; Jack and Oddfellow: Chaos and Control. 

Jack vs Oddfellow!

As you travel through the house the stories of each icon of horror will be unraveled. You’ll wind your way through their evil dimension and see the two battle each other in a deathmatch that has been brewing for decades. However, as you near the end of the house Jack and Oddfellow come to realize that their power is much stronger together than separate. Will the souls of the guests be the fuel to their ultimate evil plan?

Tell us at iHorror who your favorite icon of horror is in the comments! If the two were to face off, who would win?

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Editorial

‘The Vampire Lestat’ Trailer: What “Dancing With Myself” Reveals About Lestat

Published

3 weeks ago

on

April 25, 2026

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If you’re one of the lucky ones who’s been watching Interview with the Vampire on AMC since its 2022 premiere (we are, in fact, an elite club), then you already know a few things to be true: 

Louis and Lestat are not only the hottest couple on television, but they have some of the most electric chemistry we’ve seen in years. Every episode is impeccably written, acted, and produced, devastating and beautiful in equal measure. The character crashouts? Iconic, for better and worse. Delainey Hayles gave us a Claudia who shattered our hearts even when we knew exactly where her story was headed — and one whose presence will haunt this narrative for the rest of its run. And Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid? Together and apart, they’ve made Louis and Lestat two of the most compelling characters on television right now.

But perhaps nothing is more universally true than the fact that these hiatuses make us a little… feral. And this one — leading into Season 3, The Vampire Lestat — has been especially brutal.

Now, with the premiere less than two months away, something incredible has finally happened: the official trailer has arrived!

We’ve had a treasure trove of crumbs since San Diego Comic-Con 2025, but overall, AMC has kept things tightly under wraps. Just enough to keep us desperate for more. And now? Now we have it. Well… kind of.

Dropped on April 22 at noon EST, the two-minute trailer offers only a fraction of what’s to come when the season premieres on June 7, but do not let the runtime fool you. It’s dense, chaotic, and absolutely packed with moments worth dissecting. So naturally, that’s exactly what we’re about to do.

Sam Reid as Lestat de Lioncourt in Season 3; Photo from AMC.

If you’re new to the show, or the books (which will absolutely be part of this breakdown), I’ll try to keep things as accessible as possible. I’ll also link out to a few previous pieces that can help fill in any gaps. And if you haven’t caught up yet, both seasons are currently streaming on AMC and Netflix. Just saying.

There’s simply, however, too much happening in this trailer to do it justice in a single piece. So we’re taking it one element at a time, and we’re starting with the music. A full breakdown of the video content of the trailer is coming next. 

Sam Reid as Lestat De Lioncourt – IWTV: The Vampire Lestat _ Season 3 – Photo Credit: Sophie Giraud/AMC

The Vampire Lestat and “Dancing With Myself”

The Vampire Lestat— the fictional band fronted by Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid) — isn’t just a narrative device this season. It’s becoming real, with original songs expected to release alongside the show, many of them written and produced by composer Daniel Hart, whose work has already been integral to the identity of the first two seasons — more on him, and the team behind this sound, very soon.

But the song playing throughout the official trailer is a cover of Billy Idol’s 1981 song “Dancing With Myself.”  

“Dancing With Myself” emerged from the post-punk scene of the late 1970s and helped define the rise of new wave in the early ’80s, a genre that softened punk’s aggression into something more commercially accessible without losing its sense of alienation. It’s glossy, performative, and deeply solitary all at once, which, frankly, makes it perfect for Lestat.

And yes, I would pay an embarrassing amount of money to hear him cover the synth-pop/new wave-esque song “Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode, but that’s neither here nor there.

It goes without saying that the team behind The Vampire Lestat isn’t choosing songs without purpose, and beyond Reid’s voice fitting really well tonally with Idol’s, the lyrics to the song seem especially befitting a certain crashing rockstar in the modern era.  

Sam Reid as Lestat De Lioncourt – IWTV: The Vampire Lestat _ Season 3 – Photo Credit: Sophie Giraud/AMC

A few lines in particular stand out:

  • Oh, when there’s no-one else in sight / In the crowded lonely night / Well, I wait so long for my love vibration / And I’m dancing with myself
  • When there’s nothing to lose and there’s nothing to prove
  • Well, if I looked all over the world / And there’s every type of girl / But your empty eyes seem to pass me by / Leave me dancing with myself / So let’s sink another drink / ‘Cause it’ll give me time to think / If I had the chance, I’d ask the world to dance / And I’ll be dancing with myself

Taken together, the song circles three central ideas: loneliness, performance, and the absence of meaningful love.

Loneliness

If there is a single emotional constant in Interview with the Vampire, it’s loneliness. But for Lestat, it’s not just a theme. It’s a driving force behind many of his choices, good and bad. 

We hear it articulated explicitly as early as Season 1, Episode 2 (“…After Phantoms of Your Former Self”), in a scene near the end of the episode (though it was the very first scene Anderson and Reid filmed together) when Lestat confesses to Louis:

“There is one thing about being a vampire that I most fear above all else and that is loneliness. You can’t imagine the emptiness… A void stretching out for decades at a time. You take this feeling away from me, Louis. We must stay together and take precaution and never part.”

It’s a quiet, romantic moment with the two, but its undeniable romance does not take away from the fact that it also reads as a warning.

Because Lestat’s fear of being alone doesn’t manifest gently. It curdles into control, volatility, and, eventually, violence. By Episode 5 (“A Vile Hunger for Your Hammering Heart”), that fear has escalated into something far more dangerous. Claudia’s return — and her plan to leave again, this time with Louis — pushes Lestat into a full emotional rupture. What follows is one of the most brutal sequences in the series: his attack on Claudia, Louis’ intervention, and Lestat dropping Louis from the sky in an act that is as much about desperation as it is cruelty.

Jacob Anderson as Louis De Point Du Lac – Interview with the Vampire _ Season 1, Episode 6 – Photo Credit: Alfonso Bresciani/AMC

That moment isn’t just about rage, but terror. Specifically, its about the terror of abandonment.

And that terror didn’t start with Louis.

As outlined in The Vampire Lestat (1985) by Anne Rice, Lestat’s human life was defined by instability, neglect, abuse, and emotional distance. His mother, Gabrielle (Gabriella in the show — and yes, we’ll get into that later… yikes), the one person he feels closest to, remains consistently cold and ultimately leaves him more than once. His first relationship, Nicolas “Nicki” de Lenfent (which also… yikes), rejects both his worldview and, eventually, him. And even Armand later tells Lestat outright that he is destined to be abandoned by those he creates.

So when immortality stretches that pattern across decades — and, now, centuries — the result is exactly what “Dancing With Myself” captures: being surrounded by people, yet fundamentally alone.

And that’s one aspect that makes the trailer’s use of this song so telling.

Because if what we’ve seen so far is any indication, between the IGN clip, the tension within his band, and the ongoing-fractured state of Louis and Lestat’s relationship, Lestat’s rise to rock stardom isn’t going to resolve that loneliness.

It is probably going to make it worse.

He may be performing for thousands. Worshipped, even. But if those connections are hollow — fans, bandmates, an audience projecting onto him rather than knowing him — then the image becomes painfully clear:

Lestat, center stage, and still dancing with himself.

Sam Reid as Lestat De Lioncourt – IWTV: The Vampire Lestat _ Season 3 – Photo Credit: Sophie Giraud/AMC

Performance

We’ve known since the very beginning that Lestat is a performer.

In Season 1 alone, he’s constantly putting on a show: playing piano at the Azalea, much to Louis’s reluctant fondness (Episode 3, “Is My Very Nature That of the Devil?”); staging theatrical displays in their home on Rue Royale for Louis and Claudia (Episode 4, “…The Ruthless Pursuit of Blood With All a Child’s Demanding”); and, of course, presiding as King of Mardi Gras, traumatizing the people of New Orleans more than once throughout the night for his own happiness (Episode 7, “The Thing Lay Still”). 

Even beyond that, Season 2 gestures toward his past on the 1700s Parisian stage in Episode 3, “No Pain” — though the truth of those performances remains… questionable (looking at you, Armand (Assad Zaman). Where is Lelio?).

Sam Reid as Lestat De Lioncourt – Interview with the Vampire _ Season 2, Episode 3 – Photo Credit: Larry Horricks/AMC

But performance isn’t always just about literal showmanship.

It’s about presentation. It’s about control. It’s about the version of yourself you choose to project. And, even more importantly, what that projection allows you to hide.

And Lestat is always performing.

He presents himself as open, indulgent, impossible to ignore, but that openness is often a kind of sleight of hand. It allows him to dazzle while withholding, to dominate the narrative while obscuring the truth. The trailer leans hard into this idea, framing his rockstar persona as something exaggerated, almost artificial. He’s louder, brasher, more overtly provocative than ever before.

Which brings us back to the lyrics:

When there’s nothing to lose and there’s nothing to prove…

On the surface, that line reads like a freedom of sorts. But in this context, it feels more like a performance of certainty than the real thing.

Because The Vampire Lestat novel is steeped in Lestat’s need to define himself, to control how he’s seen, and to rewrite his own narrative. And given where the show has left him — his fractured relationship with Louis, the weight of Claudia’s death, the lingering guilt and denial — it’s hard to read “nothing to lose” as truth.

If anything, it sounds like someone trying very hard to believe it.

The same goes for “nothing to prove.” Because Lestat is, in many ways, still trying to prove everything: his power, his independence, his monstrosity, even his worthiness of suffering. That famous line —

“Oh Lestat, you deserved everything that’s ever happened to you…”

The Vampire Lestat, Page 436

— doesn’t read as acceptance so much as self-condemnation. A performance of self-awareness that never quite resolves into peace.

If the music is any indication, this rockstar era isn’t about actual liberation. The persona gets bigger, louder, more undeniable, but the cracks underneath it widen just as quickly.

The performance can only hold for so long.

And when it finally falls apart, as the season’s hints of a “rise and fall” suggest it inevitably will, it won’t simply just collapse, but will force whatever is being hidden into the spotlight instead.

Sam Reid as Lestat De Lioncourt – Interview with the Vampire _ Season 1, Episode 1 – Photo Credit: Alfonso Bresciani/AMC

Absence of Meaningful Love

Last, but certainly not least — and arguably most important — is the absence of meaningful love.

Like loneliness, this is a theme deeply embedded in Interview with the Vampire. But what “Dancing With Myself” highlights is something more specific: not just the loss of love, but the inability to access it, even when it exists.

And that’s where Lestat and Louis become central to the song’s meaning.

From what the series has already shown us, their relationship is not only the emotional core of the story, but the most real and significant connection either of them has ever had. Season 1 makes that clear, even when it’s at its most volatile. Season 2 reinforces it even further by showing us that even though Lestat may be “gone,” he never leaves the narrative. He lingers in Louis’ mind, shaping his choices, haunting his relationship with Armand, and ultimately highlighting a truth the show never lets us forget, which is that nothing Louis builds in Lestat’s absence comes close to what they had together.

Which makes the song’s fixation on unfulfilled connection hit even harder.

Because if “Dancing With Myself” is about longing for something just out of reach, then it maps almost too neatly onto where this story leaves them — separated, fractured, and, for all intents and purposes, withholding love from one another.

Jacob Anderson as Louis De Point Du Lac and Sam Reid as Lestat De Lioncourt – Interview with the Vampire _ Season 1, Episode 7 – Photo Credit: Alfonso Bresciani/AMC

And from Lestat’s perspective, that absence is everything.

As explored in The Vampire Lestat and later novels, Louis is not just a great love; he is the love. 

There are countless passages that reinforce this, moments where Lestat’s fascination, devotion, and emotional connection to Louis border on overwhelming. Some of my favorite passages include, but are not limited to: 

  • “Yet Louis gained a hold over me far more powerful than Nicolas had ever had. Even in his cruelest moments, Louis touched the tenderness in me, seducing me with his staggering dependence, his infatuation with my every gesture and every spoken word.” — The Vampire Lestat, Page 433
  • “It was the love of Louis which had at times crippled Lestat, and enslaved Armand. Louis need not have consciousness of his own beauty, of his own obvious and natural charm.” — Merrick, Page 142
  • “[Louis’] beauty had always maddened me. I think I idealize him in my mind when I’m not with him; but when I see him again I’m overcome.” — The Tale of the Body Thief, Page 106

But it is even more apparent, even more all-consuming, in the show. Lestat’s love of Louis is undeniable, again, despite their past. From the very first moment he saw Louis in Season 1, Episode 1 (“In Throes of Increasing Wonder”), the attraction was evident, but as the episode and season progress, it is clear that Lestat’s love for Louis is what, quite literally, keeps him going in this immortal life. 

Which is exactly why the lyrics land the way they do.

Well, I wait so long for my love vibration / And I’m dancing with myself…

and

If I looked all over the world… but your empty eyes seem to pass me by…

These lines don’t just suggest loneliness, but waiting. Waiting for a specific kind of love, one that isn’t interchangeable, one that can’t be replaced no matter how many people surround you.

And the trailer, and interviews with the cast and crew at past events of SDCC and New York Comic Con (NYCC), seems to lean into that idea.

Because while Lestat’s rockstar persona promises excess of attention, admiration, and endless bodies in endless rooms, the song takes away from that. The implication is clear: none of it is enough. Not the fame, not the show, not the distractions.

None of it is enough if the one person he actually wants isn’t there in the way he wants and needs them.

So what fills that gap?

Performance. Indulgence. Self-destruction.

Sam Reid as Lestat De Lioncourt – IWTV: The Vampire Lestat _ Gallery – Photo Credit: Frank W. Ockenfels III/AMC

The lyrics hint at it —“let’s sink another drink… give me time to think”— and the trailer visuals, as well as some of the other smaller clips AMC has been sharing over the last couple of weeks, seem to follow suit. Whatever this era of Lestat’s life becomes, it doesn’t read as fulfillment. It’s more of a coping mechanism. And a really bad one. 

Ultimately, what “Dancing With Myself” captures, and what the trailer reinforces, is that Lestat isn’t just alone, but he is alone without the one person whose love ever made that loneliness bearable.

And until that changes, no amount of noise, attention, or performance is going to fix it.

Because change will be required from both of them. From Lestat, a confrontation with who he is beneath the performance; from Louis, a willingness to face what remains between them.

And when that shift finally comes, it will be beautiful and probably send me into a psychosis.

But until then, the lyrics linger where Lestat is now: searching, performing, and still, despite everything, waiting for Louis’ love.

Conclusion

What makes this trailer so effective isn’t just what it shows, but how it sounds. The choice of “Dancing With Myself” is deliberate, layered, and deeply revealing of Lestat’s mental state during what will probably be the beginning of his journey to rockstardom. Through its lyrics and tone, the song reframes everything we’re seeing: Lestat’s rise to fame as a performance, his excess as coping, and his isolation as something that no amount of attention can truly resolve.

Jacob Anderson as Louis De Point Du Lac and Gabriel Freilich as Pale Young Vamp – Interview with the Vampire _ Season 2, Episode 8 – Photo Credit: Larry Horricks/AMC

Loneliness, performance, and the absence of meaningful love aren’t just recurring themes in Interview with the Vampire, but now something embedded directly into the music of this trailer, guiding how we interpret nearly every frame, character action, and piece of dialogue. It’s a reminder that this next chapter, The Vampire Lestat, isn’t just about reinvention but exposure.

And if this trailer and its music are any indication, we’re in for something messy, emotional, indulgent, and probably devastating in all the best and worst ways.

This might be me reading way too much into a trailer song choice, but I don’t think I am. To quote OutKast in “Hey Ya!:” “Y’all don’t wanna hear me, you just wanna dance.”

And if that isn’t exactly what this trailer is doing, I don’t know what is.

All I do know is that June 7 cannot come fast enough.

In the meantime, you can watch the official trailer below and listen to “Dancing With Myself” by The Vampire Lestat to hear exactly what he’s telling us. 

Be sure to follow us here at iHorror for our upcoming breakdown of the trailer’s visual content — we’re covering all things The Vampire Lestat as we count down to its premiere on AMC and AMC+ on June 7 at 9 p.m.

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