Review of Vampire Academy (2014) by Tannersoetaert — 11 Feb 2014

Very disappointing and chalked full of missed opportunity's and untapped potential. In theory this movie did everything right "sorta" they got a great director, the source material is very good and they cast in my opinion a very strong cast well suited for the roles. I do love mark waters and on the surface this movie was perfect for him a story about girls in a high school with vampires its not his fault for making the movie the way he does best it just wasn't the right movie for him. The things that make the book series so successful are the relationships between the characters and we didn't see enough of that due to the god awful pacing and the inner struggle and resilience of rose along with her determination to protect Lissa and that just never really came across. Did it fallow the plot points of the book sort of but it glossed over what should have been the focus the emotion and turmoil instead of the snarky remarks and attempts at memorable one liners none of witch I remember. It is that turmoil and relationship of rose and Lissa that makes it different from twilight or harry potter not making a twilight joke.

As for the acting I do still believe Zoey Deutch was the right fit for rose I just don't believe she was given the direction or opportunity to show what she is capable of as an actress. she was a bit to detached but that appears to be how it was supposed to be but I still would have loved to see her be strong and vulnerable and use the snarky comments has a defense mechanism instead of the we have to tell everybody the story in as short of time as possible quick some one try to make a joke way in witch she was used. when she was given the opportunity it was a very good scene well half a scene due to pacing problem but not her fault. in the case of her costar Danila Kozlovsky I felt he did a fantastic job at portraying Dmitri and had great chemistry with Zoey but the relation ship in the movie felt like the rest of the movie feeling rushed and left me wanting more. Lucy Fry is another case of many in the movie where I feel her charecter didn't develop properly and was missed used due to time I wish I could have seen more of a supportive relationship between Lissa and Rose instead of using her mainly as a device to move the story along and explore her corrector more.

Over all I feel the acting wasn't bad just given wrong direction, the action scenes ranged from ridiculous to slightly above average, most scenes were way to short and were difficult to keep up with the story and I felt like the characters were trying to explain the scene to us. and did I mention the pacing.