Vampire Academy Movie Review

September 12, 2017     erinthebooknut     Page to Screen

This movie is so weird.

I mean its not bad per se but it’s not good either. Now I’ve only read this first book in this series, and I really liked it. It too wasn’t the best vampire story I had ever read but it was charming and the characters were bad ass and had plenty of heart and strength. The movie versions? Not so much.

The most distracting part of this movie when compared to its book counterpart is how certain things are emphasized. I feel like the movie takes the Mean Girls aspect of the book, which is mostly minimum, and turns that into the guiding principal of the movie. Lissa is SO unlikable in the movie, where in the book she’s sweet, charming, and a little bit fucked in the head, but mostly a good person. Movie Lissa? She’s a dick.

On the other hand Rose completely loses her badass strength as a character. Her heart, her core as a character is completely missing. She comes off petulant instead of determined, that’s not what we want in our hero.

Dmitri is still pretty great, though maybe not as smoldering as I imagined. Also someone mentioned to me that he looks like a young, buff Jack Black and now that’s all I can see. Hrumph.

If I wanted this Mean Girlsy feel, I’d go read Blue Bloods, the more high fashion, high class vampire story which I much more associate with that aesthetic. Here I wanted the darker tone of the book, the urgency, the evil that is coming their way. I got none of that. They even market it as Vampire Mean Girls. Blech. Leave my books alone, Hollywood.

I’ll give it 3 nuts, if only for the fact that if you can forget that it’s an adaptation it can be an entertaining film. It just fails as an adaptation of beloved source material.

What did you think of Vampire Academy? Share in the comments.

From my shelf to yours,

Erin

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