20 Scariest Female Horror Villains

Aaliyah as Akasha (Image via Warner Bros.)

3. Akasha (Queen of the Damned)

So, let’s be brutally honest. Queen of the Damned is not a good movie. It’s a bit of a mess, frankly. But, there is one bright, shining example of what went right: the ancient vampire queen, Akasha.

Anne Rice, who wrote the novels that formed the basis of Interview with a Vampire, Queen of the Damned, and probably every other vampire movie you’ve seen, loves gothic prose. When you crack open an Anne Rice book, you’d better get ready to revel in rich, complex prose. She also loves gothic-style plotting, in which the story and its characters grow more elaborate with each passing page.

This is all to say that it would take more than a mere slide to sum up Akasha’s deal. The incredibly condensed version reads as such: Akasha is the first vampire (more or less). Since she’s the progenitor of all vampires, she’s often called the Queen of the Damned. At the beginning of the film, she’s dormant, but the vampire Lestat’s music awakens her.

Thus begins her ill-defined rampage, where she apparently wants to drink all of the blood in the world. That’s a bit of an issue, considering the other vampires would like some blood, too. She’s defeated, of course, but not before some real scene-stealing.

Akasha was played by singer Aaliyah. This was to be the second film role in her burgeoning acting career. Tragically, though, the twenty-two year old singer was killed in a plane crash only months before the film’s release.