Rebecca who is haunted by her father's suicide enrolls in an elite boarding school for girls. Rebecca is suspicious of Ernessa, the new arrival. But is Rebecca just jealous of Ernessa's bond with Lucie, or does the new girl truly possess a dark secret?
Roiling with jealousy, suicide and latent lesbian urges, "The Moth Diaries" dances on the border between hallucination and reality without fully committing to either.
Calum Waddell
SFX Magazine
May 24, 2013
A redundant teen-horror romp which, in the space of its slender running time, actually begins to make you pine for the return of Bella and Edward.
Where are the shivers? The girls are properly fragile, ethereal and neurotic, but the way Ms. Harron gingerly moves them around like porcelain dolls is too careful to stir up much terror.
There's a terrific sense of menace in this gothic dramatic thriller, which plays on the story's fantasy elements to take us into a teen girl's troubled imagination. It's beautifully shot too.
Harron, a supremely intelligent adaptor who did wonders with the screen version of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho, simply doesn't have the chops to give this story the florid kick it needs.
Like the central character, it's difficult to convince ourselves that this sinister nastiness isn't really happening. So we get increasingly unnerved as the story progresses.
