Vampire Academy (2014)

Back in the last decade, The Twilight Movies sort of ruined what it meant to be a vampire by making it too romantic. Unfortunately, if it wasn't for the fact that today's film starred my celebrity crush in Zoey Deutch (Set It Up), I probably wouldn't have chosen to watch Vampire Academy for today. The film was released in 2014 and it was directed by Mark Waters (Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past) and it stars Zoey as Rose Hathaway, a Dhampir who is a half human, half vampire who is sworn to protect the Moroi, a race of vampires who learn to live very discreetly in our world. Unfortunately, there is the race of vampires that Rose is sworn to protect against and that is the bloodthirsty vampires called Strigoi and she will be put to the test when someone tries to sabotage her Moroi's place in the kingdom. The film also stars Lucy Fry (Bright) as Lissa Dragomir, Danila Kozlovsky (Hardcore Henry) as Dimitri Belikov, Gabriel Byrne (End Of Days) as Victor Dashkov, Olga Kurylenko (Quantum Of Solace) as Headmistress Kirova, Sarah Hyland (Modern Family) as Natalie, Cameron Monaghan (Gotham) as Mason, Ashley Charles (Jimi: All Is by My Side) as Jesse, Claire Foy (The Girl In The Spider's Web) as Ms. Karp, Dominic Sherwood (Don't Sleep) as Christian Ozera, and Joely Richardson (Color Out of Space) as Queen Tatiana.

So, I am going to say right now that this is probably the worst Zoey Deutch film I have ever watched and probably one of the worst Vampire films I have ever seen. Let's just put it this way, the film was way too much Mean Girls and not enough Heathers as the poster suggested that it was written by. The worst thing about it or I should say one of the worst things about it is the fact that it tried to be as cool as the Twilight films and that in of itself is a bad idea to begin with. I think the only good thing about the film itself was Zoey Deutch, but even that was a tiny bit of a stretch. one minute , the main princess is all innocent and then she becomes the bad bitch on campus, but as soon as he friends ankle breaks she becomes the goodie two shoes all over again, but with a little more guts. I don't even want to talk about the action sequences in this film, but even that is as awful as the idea of Vampires trying to be Harry Potter. This film was just all over the place and the creepy dynamic of Zoey's character with her instructor was just a little weird as it should have been handled as just a school girl crush. The only redeeming factor was the explanation of how one becomes a Strigoi which honestly sounds like a faction in the Russian Mob. I honestly could not wait for this film to come to an end when it was all said and done because my patience with the writing and the action was at it's wits end. That is why this film is getting a D for a final grade as I am filing it in the burn at once category.