Vampire Academy

A Hogwarts for bloodsuckers is the setting for this glossy, smarmy and weak fantasy adapted from the first of Richelle Mead's young-adult novels. In attendance are benign aristocratic vampires called Moroi, their half-breed Dhampir guardians, and the evil adversaries of both, the Strigoi. It's up to a Dhampir called Rose (Zoey Deutch) to protect Moroi princess Lissa (Lucy Fry) from a mysterious threat to her accession. Once past the numbing mythology, director Mark Waters's anaemic film becomes a trudge through tedious teen banter about sex and fashion, an endless parade of hunks for the target audience to swoon over, and a jokey tone edging ever closer to parody. There's no real horror and only a few globs of cheesy action, while Gabriel Byrne overacts as a terminally ill patriarch and Joely Richardson puts in the briefest of cameos as a vampire queen. As Twilight knock-offs go, this one truly does suck.