Directed by:
Mary HarronScreenplay:
Mary HarronCinematography:
Declan QuinnComposer:
Lesley BarberCast:
Lily Cole, Sarah Bolger, Scott Speedman, Valerie Tian, Judy Parfitt, Melissa Farman, Sarah Gadon, Anne Day-Jones, Kathleen Fee, Gia Sandhu, Deena Aziz (more)VOD (1)
Plots(1)
A vulnerable student is filled with a sense of foreboding about a mysterious new arrival at a girls' boarding school in director Mary Harron's adaptation of Rachel Klein's gothic novel. Helped to recovery by her best friend Lucy (Sarah Gadon) after the suicide of her father, sixteen-year-old Rebecca (Sarah Bolger) soon begins to feel ostracised when Lucy falls under the spell of darkly moody newcomer Ernessa (Lily Cole). When her concerns about the new student's motives are dismissed as jealousy by Lucy, a chance reading of a gothic novel triggers the belief in Rebecca that Ernessa may in fact be a vampire and is trying to steal her friend's life force. When staff and pupils at the school suddenly begin to suffer a series of deadly freak accidents, Rebecca decides to uncover the truth about Ernessa once and for all. (Lionsgate Home Entertainment)
(more)Reviews (2)
At first, it seems like it could be a horror set in an intriguing environment, with emphasis on atmosphere, but in the end, it turns out to be just a pseudo-young adult romance, which also didn't quite work out. The characters are seemingly interesting at first glance but are otherwise boring and flat, just like the story, which quickly becomes tedious.
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Empty crap that relies on the gothic vampire mythology (the film says that every vampire story has three attributes: sex, blood and death, but here the sex is only insinuated, the blood is everywhere in only one dream sequence and there aren’t too many deaths, either) and that wants to be self-aware psychological horror (describing the relationship between two friends who become estranged due to a supernatural creature that controls one of them), but that in the end only causes the indifference of the viewer, at best, and laughter, at worst. Moth Diaries doesn’t work on any level, the dialogues are toe curling, the actors are wooden and there’s no atmosphere. I expected something slightly above-par, what I got was conceited crap that I will try to forget soon (which, I believe, won’t be much trouble). PS: The only interesting thing in the film is the look of the main “moth”, it’s really nasty.
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