‘Vampire Academy’ is another in a long line of supernatural movies that just seem to blend into the cinematic landscape. The focus on the two female leads is an interesting angle, but the film never rises above its many flaws.

‘Vampire Academy’ follows Rose Hathaway (Zoey Deutch), a half-human half-vampire, and Lissa Dragomir (Lucy Fry), a vampire princess. Rose is training to be a guardian to defend Lissa’s race, the human friendly Moroi, from the films antagonistic evil race of bloodthirsty vampires known as the Strigoi. As the film begins, we see the two attempting to avoid being taken back to St. Vladimir’s Academy after escaping two years previously, but the two are eventually captured by Dimitri Belikov (Danila Kozlovsky). The two are made to live in the halls of the Academy until Rose can free herself and Princess Lissa and return the throne to its rightful heir. 

When I saw that ‘Mean Girls’ director Mark Waters was attached to Vampire Academy, I was intrigued to see it. Although this film has some of the snark Girls’ had, ironically ‘Vampire Academy’ has none of the bite. The film tries especially hard to set itself apart by throwing an overly complicated story in a genre that has been done over and over since the first ‘Twilight’ film was released in 2008. The end result is the bland mess that is ‘Vampire Academy.’ 

There were a few funny moments in the film, generally thanks to the backwards nature of the school set against the high school cliches seen since the 1980’s, but it tries too hard to be a good comedy. Even the supernatural elements of the film seemed half baked and unexplored. Some of the actors make up for the lack in writing skills — especially Zoey Deutch’s action oriented scenes — but the film did not have the polish needed to be better than the sum of it’s parts.

I have not read the series ‘Vampire Academy’ is based on, so if you are a fan of the books there may be more here for you than there was for me. As a stand alone film, ‘Vampire Academy’ wasn’t great. The acting was often stilted except for a few stand out actors, the effects were uninteresting, and the film was generally forgettable.

1/5