The Moth Diaries | Review

Celebrated indie helmer Mary Harron returns with her first feature since 2005, an adaption of a popular novel by Rachel Klein, The Moth Diaries, concerning vampirism in a female boarding school. Whereas the female boarding school setting was once a hotbed of repression, latent lesbian tendencies, hysteria prone young ladies and fibromyalgia suffering matrons, it has now become a formula for excessive camp and unintentional laughs. Harron’s latest is only a representative example of all the reasons why this genre tends to be revamped in all the wrong ways.

Set in the Irish countryside, Rebecca (Sarah Bolger) returns to Brangwyn College, still grappling with the suicide of her father, a famous poet. She immediately seeks comfort with her best friend, Lucie (Sarah Gadon), a young woman of a perfect disposition. Expressing their love for each other in Sapphic tinged reminisces and school girl games, their world is suddenly disturbed by a new student, Ernessa (a striking Lily Cole), an afflicted young woman also recovering from her father’s suicide. Lucie is instantly intrigued by Ernessa, and, as if under a spell, she becomes Ernessa’s best friend and isolates herself from Rebecca. As Rebecca narrates her distress through her trusty diary, we see Lucie become pale, frail, and sickly. Also, other bizarre incidents begin to happen to Rebecca’s other, lesser friends and she soon realizes that Ernessa is perhaps an evil vampire, hell bent on destroying the precarious existence she has eked out for herself. Rebecca seems to find no solace in the adults, as she approaches both the estranged head of the school, Miss Rood (Judy Parfitt), and a seductive literature instructor (Scott Speedman), obviously eager to bed the young lass, though he may just be an awful big fan of her father’s poetry. As girls start to die, Rebecca attempts to take the situation into her own hands.

The Moth Diaries borrows heavily from classic literature with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Speedman’s teacher has the girls reading J. Sheridan LeFanu’s classic novel, Carmilla, an influence on Stoker, concerning lady lesbian bloodsuckers. Direct passages are used, which of course mirror exactly what’s going on in the plot. And as her best friend Lucie withers away, one can’t help but link this to Dracula. While the girls’ boarding school setting was traditionally a hotbed of exploitation in B thriller/horror cinema, The Moth Diaries is evidence that this is no longer a thrilling subgenre. As awkwardly hysterical as something like Lost and Delirious (2001) and actually less fun than the strange train-wreck, Cracks (2009), Harron’s boarding school has A list aspirations with all the worst B list trappings.