THE MOTH DIARIES Review

• Save

Every film-lover has had that moment when he or she sees a film that tries to say too much and ends up saying little-to-nothing at all.  Unfortunately, that is the case with Mary Harron’s adaptation of Rachel Klein’s female adolescent angst drama The Moth Diaries.  Here is a film that attempts to cover female friendship, hetero- and homoerotic longing, suicide, coming-of-age, murder, love, betrayal, jealousy, familial separation, grief, empathy, and much more in a single 85-minute vampire fantasy.  If it can be done, this is not the film that does it.  Its downfall is largely due to the piling up of explication upon explication as if Harron does not trust viewers to follow a simple but sexy storyline virtually styled after the famous made-for-television after-school movies of decades past.

The film opens with teenage girls joining one another for a new term at a Catholic boarding school.  Most of the girls we meet know each other from previous terms – this is especially true for best friends Rebecca (Sarah Bolger) and Lucy (Sarah Golden).  We know that Rebecca and Lucy are inseparable and that Rebecca is particularly dependent upon Lucy.  Viewers are led to believe that this dependence has grown since Rebecca’s famed poet father committed suicide a couple of years before the film’s opening scenes.  The close relationship between the two girls is forever interrupted by the arrival of a new British student named Ernessa (Lily Cole).  Like any literary and/or cinematic predator prototype, Ernessa tirelessly works to separate and weaken the two girls to fulfill her own desires.  Early on, the oft-seen triangle is in place with Rebecca as heroine, Ernessa as foe, and Lucy as victim.

This triangle can be found in numerous teenage girl stories.  The fanciful twist here is that Ernessa is a vampire-like creature who forces her way into the existing friendship to prey on Lucy.  However, the decision to attack Lucy is confusing and illogical.  Lucy appears the vision of confidence and carefree youth while Rebecca is the introspective and wounded one.  One could or would have imagined that Ernessa would pick on Rebecca as the weaker of the two, especially given that they have their fathers’ suicides in common (though we know Ernessa’s father killed himself over 100 years prior).  This against-the-grain characteristic could have opened up many possibilities, but the film simply does not have the time or energy to follow up on Ernessa’s motives.  I will leave that central story’s remaining particulars to the film’s viewers.  Be forewarned, there are many an incredulous event that occur one right after the other.

I wish to end on the film’s major downfall.  As previously noted, Harron dooms the film with double explication.  First, a new handsome male English teacher arrives and begins the term with a study of gothic fantasy fiction (which is the film’s style).  In a segment too on-the-nose to be believed, he introduces Bram Stoker’s Dracula as being about “sex, blood, and death” which mirrors the central themes in The Moth Diaries.  Second and more importantly, he assigns the girls a vampire novel with a female-centered storyline that perfectly mimics the film’s own narrative.  In this situation, tone might very well have saved the film just as Harron’s nicely-captured satirical preppiness of the 1980s had saved her outrageous adaptation of American Psycho.  Harron has likened the tone here to Peter Weir’s acclaimed Picnic at Hanging Rock.  Unfortunately, she aims too high and misses by a mile.  Weir’s masterpiece is known for its inaudibly powerful tone while Harron’s fantasy bashes us about the head with too much explanation and not enough mystery.