Animation
The Chosen Adventures
The Chosen Adventures is not Scripture. But for those who don’t mind a little talking sheep with a lot of strong life lessons, this show might be a nice fit for your family.
Vee Hauntley is your average 13-year-old girl with average 13-year-old problems. Her parents are overprotective, the “cool girls” at her boarding school are always on her nerves, and she constantly has to worry about hiding her fangs and psychic powers from her friends.
Okay, maybe not all of her problems are average.
Vee may be a vampire, but she won’t let that stop her from becoming a pop superstar. Her dreams of making music lead her to the prestigious Wilson Hall Academy for the Arts, where she’s forced to hide her true nature from her classmates.
Except blending in with the human world isn’t as easy as Vee thinks. Between going to classes and studying for exams, she also must look out for vampire hunters lurking in the shadows. And what about her new friends? If they find out who she really is, will they even like her at all?
Despite her very-not-average teen problems, Vee is still determined to fulfill her musical dreams, even if it kills her—which, since she’s already technically dead, would be a pretty impressive feat.
If there’s one thing Vee would like you to know about her, it’s that she’s a good vampire. She doesn’t crave blood or have to stop herself from digging into her classmates’ throats. In fact, other than the fangs (which only come out when she’s emotional) and the psychic powers (which she rarely uses), it’s hard to tell she’s a vampire at all.
Still, plenty of jokes play off classic vampire tropes. Vee is eager to try pizza for the first time, saying that she “loves red sauce,” and she panics when a classmate mentions “high stakes” (“Can we please use a different word?” she politely requests). Vampirina: Teenage Vampire gets plenty of mileage out of its titular undead beings without including their more nefarious habits.
But even though those jokes simply riff on well-known elements of vampire lore, they do reference—well, some pretty messy elements. Historically, vampires have been considered unholy monsters, which’ll push the show off limits for many. And, naturally, parents will want to be aware of other paranormal themes throughout the show. One of Vee’s close friends is a ghost boy named Demi who protects her from vampire hunters. His only real ghostly feature is that he can walk through walls, and there’s no reference to his death or how he became a ghost. Vee’s parents warn her about the dangers of the human world by telling her about Van Helsing, the infamous vampire hunter.
Despite all this, the show makes no attempt to be scary or frightening. Think Hotel Transylvania rather than Dracula.
Vampirina: Teenage Vampire is about as squeaky clean as you can get with a show about vampires. Still, keep those supernatural elements in mind before introducing your young viewer to Vee’s toe-tapping tunes.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
Vampirina “Vee” Hauntley arrives at Wilson Hall Academy for the Arts determined to become a famous musician — if she can keep her identity as a vampire a secret, that is.
Paranormal themes occur throughout the episode, though they’re not intended to be frightening. Vee’s friend Demi is a young ghost who protects her from vampire hunters. Vee and her roommate, Sophie, write a song called “Supernatural” about their friendship (“It’s supernatural/the way we get along/don’t meet someone like you too often”). Vee and Sophie decide to be friends forever, and Vee innocently suggests making the oath in blood; Sophie answers that a pinky promise would work just fine.
Vee uses “fangs” and “bats” in place of curse words. She sometimes exclaims “oh, bats!” and jokingly tells her father “I’ll kick you in the fangs.”
Lauren Cook is serving as a 2021 summer intern for the Parenting and Youth department at Focus on the Family. She is studying film and screenwriting at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. You can get her talking for hours about anything from Star Wars to her family to how Inception was the best movie of the 2010s. But more than anything, she’s passionate about showing how every form of art in some way reflects the Gospel. Coffee is a close second.
The Chosen Adventures is not Scripture. But for those who don’t mind a little talking sheep with a lot of strong life lessons, this show might be a nice fit for your family.
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