Vampire Academy

Rose Hathaway (Zoey Deutch) is a Dhampir. Dhampirs protect the Moroi who are kinda vampires. Rose had run away from St Vladimir's Academy with her Moroi friend Lissa Dragomir (Lucy Fry). They have a rare psychic connection. Lissa is the last of the Dragomirs and in line for the crown. They are brought back to the Academy where they face mean girls, convoluted politics, and the ever threatening Strigoi who are turned-evil violent powerful vampire creatures. The Moroi learn to control the basic elements while the Dhampir learn to fight.

It's yet another one of these YA series and more expositions of new terminology to get through. It's enough to turn off anybody. The story throws everything at the viewers. It's a jumble mess. The Academy is reminiscent of Hogwarts except less magical and less interesting. It's also got the modernity setup in a mishmash of styles. The mean girls aspect is simplistic. The writing is not really up to standard. Zoey Deutch tries to bring some interest with a jokey fast-talking sarcastic girl but it's been done better. That's probably the only part that holds any promise and differentiate itself from all the other YA series. It's as if Ellen Page's Juno got dropped into one those franchises. Even though she doesn't succeed, she's still somewhat interesting and the only reason why I would rate this marginally better than the other sludge. Very marginally...

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 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'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.

To begin with, I would like to thank @dioptrabooks , feelgoodentment and @MtvGreece for giving me two tickets for the first screening of #VampireAcademy in Greece! The event was held in a cinema in Abelokipous, Athens and we were like 300 fans, or something! It was insane and we, the fans, started getting crazy as we were counting down till the beginning of the movie.

In my opinion, Vampire Academy, is one of the best movie adaptations I've ever seen, since the #TwilightSaga #BreakingDawn part 2. Do not get me wrong; the film has nothing to do with sparkling vampires. The plot line itself was totally different. Let alone the fact that, I have read the books so I knew what I was about to watch.

The movie's plot line stays true to the book's one, but some kick-arse changes occurred and the movie turned out to be more spectacular than expected. Unfortunately, though, the beginning of the movie felt like it was happening really fast. To be honest, had I not read the books, I'd be confused about the three types of vampires (Moroi, Dhampir, Strigoi).

I should probably add that I had my doubts about both the director and the script-writer of Vampire Academy but the film flowed smoothly and it kept you captive its passing minute since there were many interesting changes, as I've already mentioned.

All in all, Vampire Academy is a movie for all ages. It is anything you want to see: action, comedy and thriller. The combination is simply mesmerizing!

ABOUT THE ACTORS/ACTRESSES:

Zoey Deutch: She was extremely good. I remember myself saying that they shouldn't have chosen her for Rose's part but now I understand why they did so. She simply rocks!

Lucy Fry: It felt like Lissa's character was written based on her! Many said that she got them bored and all but hello….it's Lissa Dragomir we're talking about! I was constantly mad at her while reading the books! :P

Dom Sherwood: OMG! I LOST COUNT ON HOW MANY EYGASMS I GOT! He's the hottest vampire (after Robert Pattinson, of course) I have seen! Like the previous members of the cast, his rocked it!

The creepiness that was coming out of Christian was there. I found myself be like, "OMG What's he going to do? Is he gonna hurt her? Look at this mysterious expression." It was like I was reading/watching the book for the first time. Like, everything around me was focused on him…

DANILA KOZLOVSKY: with a couple of words: HE IS OUR Russian GOD! Simple as it is! OMG! When he was getting some training done I was gazing up at him like gawk! His performance was remarkable and he spoke fluently English.!