As anticipated, a new trailer for Vampire Academy made its way online this evening, giving us a fresh look at the upcoming fangy adaptation, which arrives in theaters next Valentine’s Day. Directed by Mark Waters and written by Daniel Waters, based on the first novel in Richelle Mead’s young adult series, Vampire Academy is set at St. Vladimir’s, a boarding school for Moroi vampires, as well as Dhampirs. The former are peaceful, mortal vampires studying to develop their supernatural abilities, and the latter are half-human/half-vampire teens who are training to be the guardians of the Moroi, to protect them against the evil, immortal Strigoi vampires. The book is told from the perspective of Rose Hathaway (Zoey Deutch), a Dhampir with a particularly close bond with her best friend Lissa (Lucy Fry).
The trailer, which comes to us courtesy of Yahoo, begins with a scene that looks pretty familiar, if you’ve seen the previously released footage, though we get the added glimpse of Rose asking Lissa when the last time she ate. At the start of the book, Lissa and Rose are on their own, hiding out and trying to avoid being dragged back to St. Vladimir’s. Trying to stay under the radar and maintain a diet that includes blood means Lissa occasionally has to feed off Rose, which explains those first few moments.
From there, the trailer takes us to St. Vlads, with Rose’s monologue explaining some of the background to the story while the video flashes through a number of scenes involving beautiful vampire people and dramatic fang-dropping moments. As melodramatic as that might seem on its own, from everything we've seen from the trailers, it looks like the drama and tension will be cut with a bit of humor here and there, and that’s to be expected, with Mean Girls’ Mark Waters at the helm, directing from a script written by his brother, Heathers scribe Daniel Waters. Seeing Rose get hit in the head by a ball during gym class seems like perfectly normal high school humor, doesn’t it? And then we see her throwing down on the mat, reminding us that these kids are tougher than average, and that Rose is clearly not someone to be messed with. Humorous school moments give way to bigger issues, like some kind of exposition and a bloody looking message on the wall, stating "Leave or Die." Someone has it out for Lissa, and while Rose is still just a guardian in training, she's determined to protect her friend.
Action, humor, a bit of romance and lots of fangs emerge in the latest glimpse of the movie, and while there might be some concern that the humor will undercut the tension a bit too much in this adaptation, I’m optimistic about that approach, as i think the source material leaves room for it, and a lighter tone could help Vampire Academy stand out a bit more amidst the flood of other young adult adaptations making their way to the big screen these days.
Vampire Academy arrives in theaters February 14. Watch the previously released cutdown trailer here and check out the poster and set video here.
