vampire academy certainly tries to be an enjoyable enough film, but it's just too bracingly unoriginal to fly. this is a film that wears its sources directly on its sleeve...and i'm not even talking about the novel by richelle mead, but instead the combination of harry potter and buffy the vampire slayer with a strong dash of twilight to boot. it's one thing to draw influences from other films but when you're directly cutting and pasting you have a problem. and even this would be forgivable if the combination was put into a cohesive plot where there was character development instead of just people making seemingly random (and usually stupid) decisions. sadly, a cohesive plot is not the goal of mark waters' little teen-oriented genre drama. instead we have the latter option, a collection of ridiculous character choices and a half thought-out storyline where who's dating who is literally just as important as who's killing who. there are a couple of admirable points in the film in regard to the concepts of bullying and slut-shaming, and i am pleased that some positive messages were inserted into the movie. but that doesn't prevent it from being a bad little bit of trash supernatural drama. the acting is lackluster and the cgi and makeup are bad. i'm sure that if you're a fourteen year-old girl who likes a dose of blood mixed in with your romantic plots than this is great, but for the rest of us vampire academy just plain (i'm sorry, there is no other way to put it) sucks. and yet, it's still a little better than most of the twilight films. consider that.