Vampire Academy

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.

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 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'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.