Delayed Reaction: Vampire Academy

The Pitch: Juno the Vampire Defender

It's amazing what I'll watch when I'm not in the mood to sift through my 100+ movie Netflix queue. I didn't assume Vampire Academy would be very good. I pay enough attention to know that it was a box office bomb that was also panned by critics. However, there's value in knowing that I can turn a movie on and not feel bad about getting distracted by something else for large chunks.

This film is like a master debater trying to fit enough words into a small window of time to make their point. If there was a phrase that more extreme than "exposition dump" I'd use it ("exposition deluge", "avalanche of information", or something like that). There's a lot to the Vampire Academy world and the film isn't designed in a helpful way to handle it. They either need a POV character who is new to the world or they need a way to limit how much new information the audience is getting. Imagine starting Harry Potter in his second year at Hogwarts. It would be gibberish trying to learn everything all at once. The audience needs Harry asking questions from the very beginning in order to get the answers we need while still feeling like a story is being told. Beginning this film with Zoey Deutch and Lucy Fry being on the run was a good start. I wish they would've kept them out of the Academy for as long as possible. The solution for getting the information to the audience is Deutch's narration.

Honestly, I like Deutch's work in the movie. Yeah, it's exactly like Ellen Page in Juno. I liked Ellen Page in Juno and "teenage girl who quips" wasn't exactly an original concept in 2007 either. In a movie where she didn't have to work so hard to keep the story moving and make sense of everything, Deutch would be an affable lead. I'm not blaming her for it not working. Most of the cast (Lucy Fry, Gabriel Byrne, Olga Kurylenko, Sarah Hyland, Cameron Monaghan) apear to be confused about how they should be playing their characters, like no one told them if they were in an epic or a comedy.
I won't even get into the story. I lost track way too early on to speak intelligently about it. Something about vampires and super vampires and people who live to defend vampires and an ancient oligarchy. I don't know how the book series handles things, but someone should've considered changing things around more in order to get a better point of entry.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend