Starring: Zoey Deutch, Lucy Fry, Sarah Hyland, Gabriel Byrne, Danila Kozlovsky, Olga Kurylenko, Cameron Monaghan, Dominic Sherwood, Sami Gayle, Joely Richardson
Directed By: Mark Waters
It might surprise you to know that this mega-flop was directed by the same guy who successfully directed Mean Girls and Freaky Friday, and to a lesser extent Just Like Heaven. Mark Waters knows how to direct comedies directed at young females. I suppose that’s why Vampire Academy failed… because it isn’t a comedy. Waters was out of his depth in the young adult supernatural school genre. Of course, the hand dealt was a weak hand to start with.
I had actually started to read the Vampire Academy book after catching it on sale at Amazon. I couldn’t make it very far. I didn’t think the story was very good, or original enough in a world built by Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games. Divergent seemed to figure out how to be different, but Vampire Academy preferred to just combine the world of Harry Potter with vampires. These vampires can even do magic! Oh, and not to be outdone by Twilight, there are good vampires and bad vampires.
Then there’s the cast. Zoey Deutch, actually the daughter of Lea Thompson, is like a poor man’s Ellen Page. She’s snarky, but not confident enough yet in who she is as a person to be believable. She’s acting snarky, not naturally sarcastic like Page. Lucy Fry, I’ve never seen her in anything before, and I can’t imagine her career taking off. Pretty girl, but not a lot of depth. Sarah Hyland is misused in her role. She should have played Rose, not her nerdy role. We’re used to seeing sassy on Modern Family, not Hyland as a geek. That’s just bizarre.
Somehow, Gabriel Byrne was paid to be in this film amidst a cast of no name actors. It’s not an incredibly bad adaptation, I was surprised at that. It’s fairly faithful to the book (at least what I read of it). I definitely enjoyed it more than City Of Bones, which I thought was almost unwatchable. Still, there’s almost no good reason to see this… unless you read the book. Which is probably why it bombed at the box office.
For every Divergent, there’s a Vampire Academy. Some movies have to bomb so others can become franchises.
FINAL GRADE: C
