Vampire Academy

I'm sitting here writing this a mere four hours after seeing the film, and I don't really know what I expected - if I expected nearly two hours of tired tropes and poor writing, coupled with all around poor performances, I would be happy. If the film was well written, well acted, and a slight bit campy, it would be fine, but it just wasn't. The concept isn't original, the cast was all around shocking, excluding Victor, although there seemed to be a complete lack of evil-ferret-stroking; his character arc was rather predictable. Every single line was just exposition after exposition, with the occasional burst of teenage sass from Rose, which was extremely frustrating after a while. Quipping one liners is not necessary, especially after an hour and a half.

Every relationship felt forced, I didn't feel any connection to the characters, and I honestly couldn't care less what happened to them; they were not believable in the slightest. A good script would have helped, but the performances also assisted in bogging it down I actually enjoyed the concept, as someone who hasn't read the books. I liked the vibe I got from the film to begin with, but it felt extremely tacky. Everything felt like plastic, everyone's face was constantly caked with makeup, felt extremely superficial and tacky, and every backdrop was injected with a tonne of poor CGI. All of the special effects through the film were just poor, and were not nice to look at. The fire effects looked like the fire effects from Adobe After Effects.

I liked what they were trying, but they honestly needed to up their game all across the board; budget-wise, script-wise, casting-wise, and the dozens of other issues with this picture. I almost got a 'it's so bad it's good' feeling, but it's heavy handed and poorly made throughout.

I do not recommend.

I see one review that simply bashed this movie for having vampires and magic. So that must pertain to twilight and harry potter right? No. This movie is a combination of underworld (slightly) and mean girls. I've read the novel and it was the exact same way. The thing is this movie was destined to follow twilight, and to be honest if twilight never came out this would be better anticipated. Anything nowadays has to live up to the sh*t that is twilight. Twilight was moody and had a message that having a boyfriend is most important while this one is simply have fun and be yourself. People always will compare vampire movies to twilight, and thats simply blasphemous. You go into this movie wanting to find deep meaningful messages and symbolism, you won't find it. Go into this movie with an open mind and ready to have fun you'll enjoy yourself immensely. This is simply a movie to have fun, that is ALL!!!

I was very excited waiting to see the movie, but It was a big disappointment when I started to watch it, The movie really sucks, in each and every way, the script, the direction and the acting is so lame, they look overreacted. I read the books and nothing to do, I know, already, some liberties are taken when making movies but this really exceeded that, considering that in the first book that is based assumes many of the facts happened that way and they knew not many details from the first book like in which element Lissa's specialize or how Lissa finds out about the relationship of Rose and Dimitri, a lot of that happened later in the other books. They are very explicit on some things and others are really absurdities that have no coherence. It's a shame they have destroyed a book that liked a lot of people and was looking forward to see it in the big Screen, to turn out in this crappy movie.

I can easily understand why people are hating on this movie so much. I have to admit that when I saw the pink high school cover of the movie, I didn't think I would ever watch it. But when I was bored out of my brains and I was looking for an airy, girlie movie, I found the trailer and it satisfied me enough to watch it. I must say that the story is quite cool, I haven't read the books and after watching this I actually want to read them. But I can understand that vampire or horror lovers find this a tacky 'another vampire movie' thing. It is predictable, girlie, the plot is bumpy and weird. Everything doesn't come together, the storyline only develops itself with more shocking revealings and predictable plot twists. But to be fair, if you are a teenage girl (or like me 21, and still in for teen movies some times) it can be amusing enough to watch. The actors look great, the plot isn't hard to follow and you can just watch it and be happy. :)

I have read all the books. Entertaining young adult novels, easy to read and difficult to put down. Loved them even though I don't really fit the age category being over 30 and a mother of teenagers. However, I was looking forward to seeing the books come to life. I kept my expectations down, but still, I'm sad to say I was so disappointed. I really, really wanted to like the movie but it fell flat.

I think it would have worked so much better as a TV-show, since the books are really about characters, and in the limited time that a movie has, there is simply no time to develop characters in the way the books do. A whole lot of time goes in to explaining who is who and what and why, and the story's twists and turns come too fast and doesn't have any time to build up any suspension at all. I found myself getting bored and wishing for the movie to end sooner than it did. It is such a pity that it was not developed for TV instead.