The Moth Diaries (2011)

What it’s about: Rebecca is suspicious of Ernessa, the new arrival at her boarding school. But is Rebecca just jealous of Ernessa's bond with Lucie, or does the new girl truly possess a dark secret?

Review: The Moth Diaries is pretty easily comparable to Sheridan La Fanu’s “Carmilla,” in the idea of a supernatural female entity preying on a younger female. It’s an adaptation of a book of the same name – I haven’t read the book so I can’t compare the two, but the film intrigued me for its comparisons to the Fanu story. “Carmilla” is a classic in vampire literature and I was interested to see how it might be spun into this new story. Unfortunately, the film falls pretty low on the scale of, well, anything. Maybe only Twilight is worse.

Sit down before you get too excited.

The protagonist of the film is Rebecca, who has begun to record her thoughts in a diary following the traumatizing death of her father. During that difficult time, Rebecca befriended Lucy (yeah, it’s a vampire film, you can probably guess what happens from here), who brought a happiness into her life that she thought she’d never find again. It’s a new year at their all-girl boarding school, and Rebecca is looking forward to a year spent with her friends.

But a new classmate has appeared – the enigmatic Ernessa (played by the striking Lily Cole, who honestly does a better job modeling than she does acting). One by one, Rebecca’s friends all meet strange ends varying from pranks that get them expelled to death itself. Ernessa grows a strange attachment to Lucy, who continues to grow weaker and paler every day. Rebecca believes that Ernessa is to blame for all of this, but she has to figure out a mystery that seems to be at the heart of the school.

There will be blood! Just not in this vampire flick!

Though this film is touted heavily as a vampire film, there honestly isn’t a lot of vampire imagery in it. If anything, Ernessa’s supernatural qualities seem better suited to that of a malicious spirit. There aren’t any tell-tale bite marks, and most of the bloodletting that we see is one scene where Cole gets to go all Bathory that turns out to be either a dream sequence or a hallucination. The interesting thing about this film is how it juxtaposes Rebecca and Ernessa’s pasts and how they intertwine, showing the loss of Rebecca’s father as comparable to what happened to Ernessa to make her into the creature that she is.

While Cole is pretty lackluster, Sarah Bolger emotes like hell as Rebecca. Plenty of the film is pretty straight forward and fairly unsurprising. I was never entirely sure where moths played into any of it, as it’s never fully explained in any case. Ernessa does turn into a bunch of moths at one point – I’m not a stickler when it comes to what vampires can and can’t do, but if you can turn into a wolf, why choose an insect instead?

Remember, it's down the road, not across the street.

If the actress playing Ernessa had been a little stronger, there would have been a great relationship going on between that character and the character of Rebecca. All throughout the film it seems like Ernessa's focus is on Lucy and on keeping everyone away from Lucy, but it becomes apparent throughout the latter half of the film that Ernessa is actually far more drawn to Rebecca. What should have been a sizzling battle of wills or even a seduction to the dark side comes off as lackluster and pretty boring.

If you’re familiar with “Carmilla,” then you’ll already know the ending of The Moth Diaries. The journey would be the fun part, but all in all it’s pretty boring and unfulfilling. What could have been an intriguing update to a classic Gothic tale fell pretty flat, but then again, a lot of young adult literature tries for great and often lands in you tried.