Mary Harron’s “The Moth Diaries” is like the “Twilight” films without the glitter, and without the silly brooding vampire boys. Great.
The story is set in a girls’ boarding school, and there’s a heavy air of Sapphic attraction–which, alas, might have been more fun if fun were what Harron had in mind. Since she has resisted providing any of the cheap horror thrills that might have invigorated this tale, the movie finally does end up resembling the “Twilight” series in one crucial aspect–it’s not in any way scary.
Sarah Bolger plays Rebecca, a student still haunted by her father’s suicide some years earlier. She and her friends spend their evenings in cuddly girl talk, much of it devoted to wondering what sex will be like if they ever find a guy to have it with. Rebecca’s best friend is a classmate named Lucie (Sarah Gadon), from whom she’s inseparable. Then a new student arrives at the school, a girl named Ernessa (Lily Cole). With her raven hair, chalk-white skin, crimson lips, and shivery stare, Ernessa suggests a runaway from an interplanetary roadshow version of The Addams Family, but only Rebecca finds her odd.
Read the full review at Reason.com