Book vs. Movie: Vampire Academy

On Friday I went to see Vampire Academy on its opening night. My friend bought the book so she could read it before the movie premiered, which is how I ended up reading it too. I really like the series now but I would recommend the movie only for fans of the series.

With any book to movie adaptation, a lot of the information about the new world gets lost in translation. Vampire Academy does a good job of attempting to explain the differences between Moroi, Dhampir, and Strigoi, but even I was a little confused and I've read the first two books. That kind of exposition just works better in books.

The movie is also really fast paced and jumps from plot point to plot point. Normally that makes for an exciting movie but events were happening so fast the viewer doesn't get enough time to fully understand what's going on. The main point of the story is that Rose is trying to protect her friend Lissa (who's a vampire) from someone that keeps leaving dead animals and messages in blood in her room. Rose is a dhampir, which means she's training to be a guardian to Lissa, who is next in line for the royal throne. If you add in Rose and Lissa's supernatural mind connection, Rose's growing attention to her instructor, and regular high school drama, you have a story with many subplots and it didn't work well in the film. There was just too much going on.

The actors and actresses did a good job, though I thought they could have been better. I imagined Dimitri a lot differently. I thought that the actresses who played the headmistress and Mia needed work though. Their portrayal of the characters was very one-dimensional, though that might have been due to the dialogue.

Honestly, this movie isn't that good and I probably would have hated it if I hadn't read the book. I would be very surprised if the rest of the series gets made into movies too.