You’ll have to excuse anybody over the age of, say, 19, who hates this film – it wasn’t made for him/her/it. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to find any intended audience beyond the relative matchbox of dorky, lovestruck, Twilight-ridiculing, womynpower teen girls. Black Nativity cast a wider net than Vampire Academy. To Academy’s credit, it doesn’t really try to attract anybody outside the net; if you’re gonna ride that wave, ya may as well ride it all the way into the beach.
Vampire Academy is the kind of film in which kids are cool and pretty and adults are annoying unsuited caretakers. Twice in this film, a girl assaults the Headmaster without consequence. Adults are ignored with clockwork regularity and for good reason – they’re either ineffectual boobs or part of the problem. This will be off-putting to those who don’t fancy themselves either Buffy or Angel wannabes.
Hold a sec – are Buffy and Angel still THE MAN (so to speak)? I mean, if you kids are gonna blindly follow the cool, you should probably know the derivation, no? Screw it; you weren’t paying attention in the first place.
Rose (Zoey Deutch) is a vampire’s best friend. The friend in question is vampire princess –yes, vampire princess- “Lissa Dragomir” (Lucy Fry). Ok, I give you props: Lissa Dragomir does sound like the name of a princess vampire. In short, there are good vampires, bad vampires and Buffy-types who act as bodyguards for the vampires. And there’s vampire royalty. Silly enough yet? 
Oh, and there’s names for all these things, but I’m older than 19, so I don’t give a crap what the names are. Rose and Lucy have been living in the wild (with us!), but get hauled back to the Academy in the early moments. Right outside the Academy, we realize why they were on the run, when bad vampires make mincemeat of the royal guard and Rose/Lucy barely escape to freedom … and expulsion. Oh, spoke too soon. While expulsion should have happened, it didn’t. Kids run this special school.
Oh, vampires have special powers, too, usually in the form of elemental manipulation. For 80% of the film, these gimmicks don’t work. The idea of vampire superpowers and vampire royalty is just a way to distinguish this teen soap opera from that teen soap opera. Ever since Buffy the Vampire Slayer began, the metaphor hasn’t changed any – the teen world often seems life and death and in the world of paranormal teen romance, the fantasy and the perception coincide. It’s very empowering for teens; it lets them understand their problems are being taken seriously on some level.
That still doesn’t justify Twilight, ok? All five of those film sucked bloody ass.
You might get the feeling I hated this film, and by all rights I should have. My common set of “Huh?”s still prevailed: Why does every other person have a British accent? Why are we in Montana? At the end of the day, this is actually just another cool teen film with a curve or two – there are friends; there relationships; there are hot guys and hot gals. Actually all the kids are hot. You could pick any one at random and probably conclude, “yeah, I’d hit that.” I wouldn’t hit Gabriel Byrne; he looks ancient here and what the Hell is he doing in this film? Have you no shame, man? You were the protagonist of Usual Suspects – are we so far removed from that time? Yes, I should have hated this, but I didn’t. Was it Zoey Deutch? Was it the film made fun of Twilight? Was it the kids were just cool enough to assume they were in a good film when they weren’t? Vampire Academy has the exact feel of a WB pilot – cool kids, silly rivalries, a hint of danger, and a lot of exposition. And if this were a pilot, I’d watch two or three episodes before giving up on the series.
♪Up in the evenin’ and out to school
The teacher resembles a human tool
Euro history and self defense
You’re hoping the bad guys won’t find the fence
Suckin’ ‘em dry right down to the bone
Morgue or prom? Ya might never known♫
Rated PG-13, 104 Minutes
D: Mark Waters
W: Daniel Waters
Genre: Twi-heavier
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Teen vamps, pun intended
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Adult authority figures
♪ Parody Inspired by “School Days”
