Top 100 Most Anticipated Films of 2011: Mary Harron’s The Moth Diaries

#75. The Moth Diaries

Director: Mary Harron
Producers: Sandra Cunningham and Karine Martin
Distributor: Rights Available.

The Gist: Based on the debut novel of Rachel Klein, this is set at an exclusive girls’ boarding school, a sixteen year-old girl records her most intimate thoughts in a diary. The object of her growing obsession is her roommate, Lucy Blake, and Lucy’s friendship with their new and disturbing classmate. Ernessa is an enigmatic, moody presence with pale skin, and hypnotic eyes. Around her swirl dark rumors, suspicions, and secrets as well as a series of ominous disasters. As fear spreads through the school and Lucy isn’t Lucy anymore, fantasy and reality mingle until what is true and what is dreamed bleed together into a waking nightmare that evokes with gothic menace the anxieties, lusts, and fears of adolescence…..(more)

Cast: Lily Cole, Sarah Bolger and Scott Speedman

List Worthy Reasons…: Hard to believe that this is only Mary Harron’s fourth film and despite this being a sub-genre that appears to have been overcooked, the filmmaker promises to stick to the novel’s strong Gothic element and abide by the girl-on-girl vampire sexuality. My personal wish is that the indie filmmaker behind I Shot Andy Warhol and The Notorious Bettie Page has an American Psycho audience in mind as well. We want blood folks. 

Release Date/Status?: This should be in the final stages of being completed. Look for a gala festival showing from where the distribution rights should be picked up, Cannes isn’t out of the question if it carries a tone that is uncommon to its recent predecessors and TIFF is a definite option for this shot in Canada production.