The Moth Diaries

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  • Opened April 20, 2012 
  • 1 hr 25 min
  • R | Some Bloody Images, Drug Use, Sexuality and Language

  • Parents: Common Sense Media says Iffy for 16+. More on child suitability

  • Rebecca (Sarah Bolger), is a young girl who, haunted by her father’s suicide, enrolls in an elite boarding school for girls. Before long, Rebecca’s friendship with the popular Lucy (Sarah Gadon) is shattered by the arrival of a dark and mysterious new student named Ernessa (Lily Cole). Lucy falls under Ernessa’s spell and becomes emotionally and physically consumed by her glamorous new friend. Rebecca, whose overtures of concern are rejected by Lucy, finds herself lost and confused. She begins to develop a crush on her handsome English teacher, Mr. Davies (Scott Speedman) and immerses herself in the Gothic vampire novel Carilla for his class. Rebecca starts to suspect that Ernessa is a vampire, but, despite the suspicious deaths that begin to occur, her fears are treated as simple girlish jealousy. As the bodies of young girls pile up and the line between reality and the supernatural starts to blur, Rebecca decides to take matters into her own hands and get rid of Ernessa. Full synopsis

  • Cast: Lily Cole, Sarah Gadon, Sarah Bolger, Scott Speedman, Judy Parfitt, Anne Day-Jones, Valerie Tian, Melissa Farman, Laurence Hamelin
  • Director: Mary Harron
  • Genres: Art House/Foreign, Horror

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Critic Reviews

80
Boxoffice Magazine
|

With bubbles of nascent arousal frothing at the film's feminine surface, Moth Diaries' commercial potential is likely to hinge on whether or not audiences can stand to be confronted with the confusion they felt as adolescents. Read full review

70
Movieline
| Stephanie Zacharek

It offers glancing pleasures of the atmospheric kind – the impact is the equivalent of a filmy cobweb brushing against your cheek. It tickles more than it bites. Read full review

63
Slant Magazine
| Andrew Schenker

This is one vampire film whose sexless, generic ending betrays a promise of revisionist complexity. Read full review

50
Entertainment Weekly
| Lisa Schwarzbaum

Her (Harron) torpid adaptation of Rachel Klein's novel about female sexual desire, jealousy, death wishes, and vampires at a girls' boarding school defeats Harron's talent for exploring darkness on the edge of kinkiness. Read full review

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Lily Cole as Ernessa in ``The Moth Diaries.''