Debbie Pang“There are 3 things you find in every vampire story: Sex, blood and death,” says a teacher in The Moth Diaries. Well, that seems to be true for this horror movie.
Riding on the teenage vampire hype from shows like Twilight and The Vampire Diaries, The Moth Diaries follows suit but with 1 main difference – the all-girls setting. This might just woo another demographic than the male-populated towns Forks and Mystic Falls.
Sadly, its commendable attempt to give the heavily-milked teenage vampire formula a twist and competent casting fell through, as the movie was simply too confusing to follow through.
Famed for directing American Psycho, Mary Harron comes back with a horror film adapted from Rachel Klein’s debut best-selling book The Moth Diaries. But with more emotional appeals than thrills, the movie appears to sit better as an art film rather than a horror movie. Too often we see movie adaptations of teen-targeted novels failing (Eragon, anyone?) and The Moth Diaries seems to fall in the same doomed category.
It’s Rebecca’s (Sarah Bolger) last year at Brangwyn College, a boarding school for girls. However, her excitement over spending an amazing year with her best friend Lucy (Sarah Gadon) evaporates when Lucy draws closer to a strange and mysterious new student, Ernessa.
As many unexplainable events start to occur, Rebecca begins to suspect that Ernessa may be a vampire and relates all these incidents to a book that she has to study for class – a story about a gothic female vampire, Carmilla. Between struggling to cope with her father’s suicide, her infatuation with the male English teacher and the making sense of her friendship with Lucy and Ernessa’s true identity, Rebecca has plenty to write about in her diary.
Set in a remote and forested area, the school has architectural details and old-fashioned furniture that fittingly complement the sinister gothic theme. The English school uniforms and the long, flowy white nightgowns the students appear in also reinforced the old boarding school feel.
But what really sends chills down your spine is the physical appearance of Ernessa, played by Lily Cole, the British actress who also won the best model title at the British Fashion Awards in 2004. Her porcelain doll face, exceptionally long and thick eyebrows, hypnotic big eyes and vivid red lips added to her dark ominous presence. Cole’s tall and slender body also made her looked like a normal prim and proper student in her uniform, but a ghostly figure in her white nightdress.
One of her most haunting scenes is when Ernessa sang a song to Rebecca that went: “My mother, she butchered me, My father, he ate me…” Though the lyrics and tune of the song were utterly eerie and disturbing, Cole sang with a serene and emotionless expression. Kudos to her for not only bringing out the creepiness in modern time Ernessa, she ably pulled off the sweet feminine Ernessa from the 1900s as well.
Irish actress Sarah Bolger starring as Rebecca and Canadian actress Sarah Gadon as Lucy managed to accurately portray the struggles and erratic behaviours of adolescent girls faced with suicidal and anorexic thoughts. Also, the chemistry is great between them because they look convincing as best friends.
No doubt The Moth Diaries is not like any other typical bloodsucking vampire series. However, as it tried to take on a different approach by using how a vampire would feel and go through as a metaphor to describe the difficulties and emotions of adolescent girls, this link is not made strongly in the film.
In fact, the show was trying so hard to create a deeper connection and engage the audience psychologically that it became too draggy and the pace was too slow. UrbanWire was more baffled and irritated than impressed. There were simply too many scenes of Rebecca being in her fantasy world before snapping back to reality, making it too confusing and messy for the viewer.
To make things worse, there were several scenes where the ambience was building up to something stimulating, but fell flat again, leaving audiences disappointed. For instance, during the night, Rebecca and her friend thought they saw Ernessa floating through a window pane but instead of investigating further, they simply went back to sleep – simply anti-climatic.
Moths are known to be drawn, to their own peril, to a flame. Yet The Moth Diaries is clearly lacking that sweet thrill of danger, and suffers for it. What could have been a brightly burning vampire flick is reduced to a guttering candle. Hopefully the next teenage-vampire movie that comes along will have a bigger bite.
Movie: The Moth Diaries
Rating: 2/5
Opens: June 21
Duration: 82 mins
Language: English
Age Rating: M18
Genre: Horror
Directed by: Mary Harron
Cast: Lily Cole, Sarah Bolger, Sarah Gadon