Previously: I, Frankenstein.

11. There’s an actual scene where two actual characters say “What if it’s so obvious [these two characters are the villains] that it’s not obvious at all?”

10. The titular academic vampires regularly attend vampire church. Vampire church. THEY GO TO VAMPIRE CHURCH ON SUNDAY NIGHTS. They are literally attending MIDNIGHT SABBATS, which is like the canonical, medieval definition of satanic but it’s supposed to be a good thing.

I — look, I don’t even have a particularly vested interest in vampire mythology, but I feel like we have to agree as a race that certain vampiric characteristics are immutable lest we devolve into total vampire relativism. It’s a slippery slope! Vampires that go to church and walk on holy ground? I don’t want to wake up in ten years and have to see a movie about werewolves who are for all intents and purposes Cylons, or whatever. You cannot be both a vampire and a regular churchgoer. I must draw the line, and I draw it here.

Also, their vampire priest stands in an Episcopalian-style pulpit while wearing Greek Orthodox vestments. Their Christ figure appears to be St. Vladimir, which is fine except for what is he a saint of? Is he a Catholic saint? Is this like, a post-Vatican II thing? What religion was he? Are they that religion too, or do they just worship Vladimir?

9. The following exchange takes place:

Christian: I’ll fire magic you into ash.
Mia: I’ll just water magic myself before you can do it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJVDYnkruOk

8. Also, these vampires are mortal, and they can walk in the sun, and they get weird diseases and die in car accidents, and they have magic powers, which makes them wizards. Not vampires. Wizards.

7. There appears to be a weird ethnic hierarchy where Russian and Romanian vampires are all royalty, followed closely by English vampires. American vampires are one step above garbage.

6. The global queen of the vampires not once but twice visits the school in order to berate a single student for truancy and misbehavior. You know, like how Queen Elizabeth used to pop into St. Andrews and call an assembly to talk about how Prince William was getting on.

5. A VAMPIRE WHO HAS JUST BEEN SHOT TO DEATH WITH BULLETS USES HIS MIND TO SET TWO EVIL DOGS ON FIRE

4. I — okay, so there are three kinds of vampires, basically, and the half-vampires (dhampirs) are basically a permanent underclass bound to serve and protect the (RIDICULOUSLY NOT IMMORTAL) royal vampires, because they have never heard of class consciousness, and then there are evil vampires, which, fine. But there’s this just enormous taboo about drinking blood from a dhampir if you’re one of the royal vampires; people react to it in absolute shock and horror. Which: again, fine.

So obviously the two main characters violate that taboo. Which: Again: Fine. That’s kind of interesting! But within the span of an hour — about three days in-movie, I think? — their friends go from being disgusted by it to sort of “eh, it works for them” which would be like if we as a society got over our brother-sister incest taboo sometime before this Thursday.

3. One of the characters delivers the most amazing speech to the entire student body that starts out as the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V  (“Blood is sustenance. Blood is family. Blood is death.”) and slowly turns into Tina Fey’s monologue from Mean Girls (“We have got to stop bullying each other”), which is amazing. She actually uses the word “slut-shaming,” which is something I have never heard outside of the internet.

2. I was the oldest person in the movie theater by a factor of about a million, and I had a legitimately amazing time.

1. At the beginning of the movie the main character describes the class schedule at Vampire Academy and there is a roughly three-second shot of a bunch of vampire teens in a laboratory holding up beakers of differently-colored Science Liquids in like, the best and most generic portrayal of Science I have ever seen. No one is doing anything other than holding up a beaker of bright blue or green fluid and looking at it intently. “Ah, yes. There’s the Science we were looking for, right here in this beaker. Tremendous,” and then taking notes.

Pompeii 3D comes out in two weeks.