The Moth Diaries

Bill Gibron is a veteran film critic from Tampa, Florida.

Perhaps it's time to put the vampire to rest, cinematically speaking. Romance has rotted the once vital movie monster to the point where ridiculous coming of age claptrap like The Moth Diaries can be passed off as full-on fright fodder. Instead, it's a slightly Sapphic excursion into that hub of unrequited lesbian love, the all-girls boarding school. Adapted from -- you guessed it -- a popular young adult novel, our main narrative centers around a rivalry between dour gal Rebecca (Sara Bolger) and eerie Goth interloper Ernessa (Lily Cole). When the latter arrives at the exclusive Brangwyn College, she is a pasty faced fascination among the various rich witch cliques. Before long, she is presumably draining the lifeblood out of everything -- including this dull excuse for entertainment.

You see, Rebecca sees school as her sanctuary, still haunted by the memory of coming across the body of her dead father (he slit his wrists in the bathtub). With the help of her best bud Lucy (Sarah Gordon), she hopes to move on with her life. Of course, when Ernessa shows up, she takes an instant liking to Becca's BFF -- and the feeling is more than mutual. Then odd things start happening. Lucy appears frail and is literally wasting away. Other students meet untimely, off screen ends. Soon, Rebecca starts to suspect that Ernessa is a bloodsucking vampire, returning to the location as part of some supernatural vendetta. Or maybe it's all in her impressionable head, the pubescent ravings of an unsure girl spoon-fed macabre tales by a macho male literature teacher (Scott Speedman). Or maybe Rebecca is just crazy.

Fact is, we don't care either way. The Moth Diaries (apparently, Ernessa's odd smelling room attracts the fabric eating insects) is neither scary nor sexy. It doesn't do enough with its teen terror parallels nor can it cough up a single sequence of actual adolescent lust. Instead, director Mary Harron (American Psycho, I Shot Andy Warhol) falls for the premise's Stephanie Meyer on Midol leanings, removing any bit of irony, emotion, or interest. While Ms. Bolger and Ms. Cole collect the required angst-ridden tokens, the rest of the movie lumbers like a semi-animated corpse. The storyline has some potential. The follow-through fails.

More importantly, The Moth Diaries is not the least bit frightening. It's the antithesis of thrilling. It remains static when it should be suspenseful and believes dread can be determined by the amount of blood let per scene. Since we aren't quite sure what Ernessa is up to (though that name should be a 'dead' giveaway), Harron hammers home her possible paranormal state. Shots suggesting hallucinogenic fantasies fail to generate much awe, while the lack of creature feature cliche renders the narrative inert. In a film like Fright Night, the vampire mythos was re-imagined for a prepped post-modern audience. Here, by trying to avoid formula, this reinvention of the neck-biter disintegrates. Even the obvious ending underachieves.

Yet for some baffling business model reason, faux Harlequin horror like the ones promised in The Moth Diaries continue to clog up the Cineplex. Even its purposed links to the classic 1872 novella Carmilla can't save it. As fans, we expect more from Harron. Her obvious skill set seems to have vanished along with any motive or meaning to this empty, erotic-less folderol. Back at the beginning of cinema, Nosferatu and his iconic Bela Lugosi brethren knew how to send shivers up and down your spine. A century later, the monster has been made meaningless. Sex, blood, and death may be the givens of any Dracula-inspired fright film. The Moth Diaries skimps on all three.

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