Inert, Ineffective ‘The Moth Diaries’ with Lily Cole

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Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Mary Harron’s “The Moth Diaries” is a perfect teaching tool for potential filmmakers. It is proof of two oft-forgotten rules of cinema: 1. Not every successful piece of work in one medium should be adapted to another (or not all good books make good films). 2. Even talented directors can be the wrong fit for the material. This movie is a mess in so many ways that promising young actresses and a typically-intriguing director get sucked into its almost-complete failure. There are clear signs of what intrigued everyone about the source material but none of it translated to quality cinema.

2002’s “The Moth Diaries” by Rachel Klein was clearly a blend of adolescent angst and gothic literature – not the easiest mash-up to translate to the big screen. The very title implies something that requires a first-person narrator, someone who can convey their complex thoughts via the written word in a way that a filmmaker simply cannot do. And such is the biggest problem with Harron’s adaptation – we never know the lead in the same way we would if we read her diary and so the distant approach to the storytelling makes it easier to see the serious flaws of the filmmaking. Those incredibly volatile days when a teenage girl comes to terms with her own family history, her changing friendships, her sexuality, and more make for interesting fiction but often come apart on their way to the big screen.

The Moth Diaries
Photo credit: IFC Films

The girl at the center of “The Moth Diaries” is Rebecca (Sarah Bolger), something of a black hole at the film’s core because we never know quite enough about her to make her story engaging. She responds to the mystery around her but Rebecca is pretty bland as a character and viewer lack of interest in her due to the lack of development or personality on Harron’s part as a writer and director is one of the film’s many flaws. We never get to know Rebecca.

What do we know about her? We know that she’s loyal to her friend and classmate Lucie (Sarah Gadon) to the point that her affection for her starts to approach the sexual. Is Rebecca in love with Lucie as more than a friend? She’s at that age where girls are losing their virginity or falling for their hot new teacher (played by Scott Speedman) but she seems more concerned about Lucie than anyone else in her world. Why so concerned? Well, the new girl who seems to be stealing Lucie’s time, the mysterious Ernessa (Lucy Cole), might be a vampire.

Of course, no one believes Rebecca’s concerns about Ernessa. She sees her wandering the grounds of the boarding school in the middle of the night and seems to be the only one who smells something sickly sweet coming from her room. Most disconcerting is how much Lucie seems to be leaving Rebecca behind in favor of her new friend. Is Ernessa an honest threat or is this merely a parable for a teenage girl losing the friend with whom she may be in love for someone new? An adolescent drama in gothic clothing?

The Moth Diaries
Photo credit: IFC Films

There’s potential here for something interesting and Harron (“The Notorious Bettie Page,” “American Psycho”) works well with the cast of talented young ladies but the film is a tonal mess. It just never develops its own personality. Part of the problem is that Cole was clearly directed to over-play her most mysterious qualities. There’s a much stronger version of the film in which Ernessa is just more average teenage competition who holds her own secrets not unlike Rebecca. Instead, Cole and Harron play Ernessa as clearly devious from the very beginning. Consequently, the film becomes more of a horror movie than an adolescent drama when it really only would have worked if it had been both.

And part of the problem with turning “The Moth Diaries” into a horror movie is that none of it is scary. Harron has proven success with dark material but she never gets a grip on the atmosphere required for a piece like this to work. Adolescence is such a crazy time that it’s often been the subject of horror from “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” to “Suspiria” but it simply never works if it’s treated as bizarrely straight as it is in “The Moth Diaries.” Even when Rebecca and a friend see Ernessa walking on the roof like a spirit, it has no actual fear attached to it. Everything is routine, by the numbers – the exact opposite of what it’s like to be a confused, emotional teenager.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com