By Melody Stewart
Intro: Vampire Academy Review
Where to Stream It? Peacock
Starring: Sisi Stringer, Kieran Moore and Daniela Nieves
Produced by: My So-Called Company and Universal Television
The western world never tires of vampire stories it seems. This story of a vampire princess and her guardian navigating vampire high school, wearing ball gowns, and attending fancy parties because “they’re royal” checks off every box on a teenage girl’s fantasy list, including champagne. But I have to hope that teenagers have better taste than this series.
Vampire Academy can be compared to the other shows of its genre and in doing so, make them look much better than they actually are. It’s Legacies, Vampire Diaries, and The Originals all wrapped as one then thrown onto a dung heap and left in the sun. Go ahead and watch it, I dare you.
Depending on your age you will have one of two possible reactions:
1. You will sit quietly watching while your IQ drops significantly (the younger viewers).
2. You will start remembering when television was good and begin to cry uncontrollably (those of us over 40). Either way, you’re worse off than when you started.
For some reason, the writers and producers thought it would be a good idea to take a best-selling book series, change everything that made it best-selling, and put it on tv. At least that’s what the fans are saying and judging from what I saw in the first episode, they must be right.
It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare
Occasionally I like a story with a lot of romance and strange plot twists like someone’s twin coming back from the dead. While Vampire Academy seems “soap operaish,” it’s a soap opera with less imagination and worse dialogue than most.
When the princess has to learn some ancient vampiric language for a ceremony, she conveniently runs into the one boy no one likes because of his parents’ mistakes (choosing the dark side by becoming Strigoi, or killer vampires).
He lays out the reasons he hides in the library and then teaches her how to say the words for the ceremony. Fantastic, he’s a bad boy and a teacher of ancient languages and it only took two minutes to set up that relationship.
As hard as it is for the writer, Marguerite MacIntyre, and director, Luis Peitro to believe writing skills matter, story arc, character development, depth, and dialogue, all of them matter. And it’s insulting to your audience when they are lacking. It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare, but it does have to be decent.
Fighting was never so boring
The fight choreography suffers from an often used speed-up effect added during editing meant to make the actors look like they can actually fight. Instead, it lent a strange choppiness to the fights that distracted from rather than enhanced the choreography. The fight scenes were also shot from so many different angles including aerial, that it was difficult to follow at times.
The acting
I am hesitant to criticize the efforts of the actors too much because they’ve been given so little to work with. They can’t make a bad script good and so they console themselves and us by treading water and grasping the few moments of decent dialogue there are. Certain actors are better than others.
So far Sisi Stringer as Rose Hathaway, Guardian to the Dragomir princess, and her Guardian overseer/partner played by Kieron Moore are the standouts. They are the most believable in their roles.
Many fans of the stories and movie have criticized the casting of an Irish actor (Kieron Moore) for the role of a Russian Guardian. Writers even kept the character’s Russian name. I don’t know why the producers made that choice, but at least he’s a decent actor. I’ll take what I can get at this point.
The leads, Daniela Nieves as Princess Dragomir and her love interest, Christian played by Andre Dae Kim are barely passable, the princess more so, but we’ll have to see how the season progresses.
‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’
No, they’re vampires remember? Instead, I might do a little comparison to when vampire shows were good — way back in the day, when vampires took themselves less seriously and had a lot more fun. Buffy anyone? Anyone?
