Vampire Academy (2014)

The teenagers Rose Hathaway (Zoey Deutch) and Vasilisa "Lissa" Dragomir (Lucy Fry) are best friend and escapee from the St. Vladimir's Academy for more than one year. When the guardian Dimitri Belikov (Danila Kozlovsky) from the St Vladimir's Academy and his team find the girls, they bring them back to the academy. Rose is a Dhampir, a good half human-half vampire breed that can eat regular food and are trained to protect the Moroi from the evil immortal vampires Strigoi. Lissa is a Princess of the Moroi, a good mortal breed of vampires that feed of blood from donors and is capable to control one of the four elements.

When they return, the Headmistress Kirova (Olga Kurylenko) intends to punish Rose, but the old Moroi Victor Dashkov (Gabriel Byrne), who was a friend of Lissa's family, dissuades Kirova from her intent. Lissa dates her outcast schoolmate Christian Ozera (Dominic Sherwood) but unexpectedly she is threatened by someone that wishes to harm her. Victor's daughter Natalie (Sarah Hyland) joins Rose and Lissa to help them to seek out who might be the enemy.

"Vampire Academy" is an entertaining fantasy with a story that is a sort of combination of "Harry Potter" with "Twilight". Zoey Deutch is gorgeous and charming and if the viewer sees this feature with low expectation, he or she might have a pleasant surprise. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Academia de Vampiros: O Beijo das Sombras" ("Vampire Academy: The Shadow Kiss")

Fmovies: I have read the books. I love Richelle Mead's books-and when I say this, I mean it. I have read every one of her books (I STILL can't believe Georgina Kincaid doesn't have her own show yet!). However, placing my love for her as an author aside, I went to see the movie with the notion that it would be terrible and cheesy (you saw the main trailer right?!). It was nothing like what was in the trailer. It was snarky, spunky and over all a good film.

HOWEVER- I'm sure you've read otherwise. I've seen the critic's reviews. I've read about how terrible (very few) people thought it was. Let me explain it a little. They have NO idea what they're talking about! (okay, that's my opinion and I don't mean to invalidate any one else's but c'mon, it's awesome!) As far as visual affects go, it's about as bad as any lower budget film. Seriously does anyone REMEMBER the first Harry Potter? Look at the last one-total difference. Budgeting can change a film completely. Which is Exactly what we will see happen when this series really takes off. If you haven't read the books, I strongly recommend talking to someone who has, they can explain things you may have missed or don't quite understand. I don't think that is a flaw in the movie either. We see films that aren't adaptations from novels and miss things, or don't have any clue what really happened until we watch it again (maybe twice?). Who hasn't watch a film again and said 'OH! I get it now'. To wrap this up I'd like to say that this movie is done really well.NO it does not EXACTLY follow every sentence in the book, but they've summarized and portrayed elements that were probably really difficult to write/act/direct. I also take comfort in the fact that the next books just get better! And I imagine that over time, the movies will get larger and larger budgets, and will get new writers and more production staff (in addition to the current ones, not replacing) in order to create the world in it's entirety for the movie audiences. It was a great film- don't knock it till you try it, at least that's what momma says ;)

I'm a hardcore fan of this book, and when I watch the movie I was like seriously?, all those scenes were too fast. and honestly, Mark Waters is my favorite director, I love Mean Girls, and freaky Friday, and stuff. But this isn't even in the same level with mean girls. And the jokes were awful, this isn't even a comedy, this isn't even an action, and this isn't even a romance. they just failed it. If they keep making VA like this, the sequel will be just as plain as this one. I'm sorry saying this, I know our perspectives are different, but this is definitely one of the bad movies of the year, if you don't see that, then you don't watch enough movies in your whole life. I'm 110% a fan of the book, but the movie... is just disappointing. But like the ending cause it's the only thing that they made it right.

Vampire Academy fmovies. I have read all of the VA series and enjoyed them immensely, mainly because of Rose. Rose Hathaway is feisty, determined, funny, and flawed, and it was always fun to see what she would do next and how that would land her in trouble. This story is not your "typical vampire" story. Everyone in the story already knows about vampires and the makeup of the society they live in. Nor is it a damsel in distress story. Rose already possesses strength and determination, although she does have impulse control issues. She is best friends with the vampire princess, Lissa Dragomir who is the last of her line, and extremely loyal and protective of her.

The movie and books have been compared to many other YA/vampire genre, but the story does not follow Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey outline. Both Star Wars and Harry Potter did excellent jobs capturing the hero's journey, and the Twilight series followed Carl Jung's development of the soul and the anima/animus well. Mead does not use either of these outlines/archetypes in her books, and her storytelling provides a freshness, as well as giving a portrayal of strong women who look out for each other.

Perhaps, the story could be compared to "Thelma and Louise" navigate a dysfunctional high school that just happens to have vampires and magic.

Now for the movie itself: the tone and pacing of the movie are very much Rose and are true to the tone and pacing of the books. I actually liked the new scenes that were added to the movie – they did not distract in ways that other book-to-movies have done, but actually enhanced the story. I think the movie represented all the dynamics of the various relationships well, although I do wish the Rose/Dimitri relationship had been better developed. There wasn't the tension between them that there was in the books. And although I wish I could have forgotten the story (and the previews) during the movie so that I could have enjoyed the movie without all that knowledge, I did find myself getting lost in the movie.

Of all the first time movies of various popular YA book-to-movie adaptations that I have read and seen, I think this movie was one of the better ones that has been done.

I loved the Vampire Books so I was really looking forward to this movie but it was one big disappointment.

The script was pretty chaotic, if you haven't read the books yet you won't understand a thing. I know the books pretty well and even I was confused about which direction the movie was supposed to be heading.

The worst part for me was the acting. When you make a movie based on a book, the least you expect is the actors match the book characters by a bit. And Zoey Deutch is not a good Rose to me. Worst of all, her acting was really poor, she completely fell flat and it was almost painful to watch. The rest of the cast wasn't much better I'm afraid.

I can only say in conclusion, I recommend you not to watch this but to go read a book instead.

When I saw the trailer for this movie I was less than impressed to say the least. I thought it looked cheesy and ridiculous and it turns out the movie was even worse than the preview. I have read every book in this series at least twice. I love them, they are probably some of my favorite books I've ever read. And that makes this review so hard for me to write, but honestly this movie is one of the worst I have ever seen to the point that I created this account to write about how horrible it was. Everything in this movie was cheesy. The writing was cheesy, the acting was cheesy, the special effects were cheesy, and the directing was awful. And on top of all that the movie as a whole made almost no sense. I went to see this with my best friend, she hasn't read the books, and she walked out having no idea what was going on and what the actual plot line was. Even with me reading the books I had an extremely hard time following everything that was going on because they jumped around from different things, they should have just followed the book. Which brings me to another point... they did NOT follow the book like other people have been saying. They brought things in that happened in the third book that had no place being in the first movie. You're not supposed to know what kind of magic Lissa has nor is anyone supposed to know about roses feelings for her instructor. I am so mad that Richelle Mead sold the rights for this movie. I think that if she would've held out for a better director and screenwriter this movie could have been almost as amazing as the books. It was so bad that it almost comes across as a spoof on the whole vampire genre. Overall don't waste your money this movie is far from worth it.