The Moth Diaries

The review in The Times by Jeannette Catsoulis was almost as careless as the news sections of that deflated, defeatist rag have become over the subsiding decades. Girls’ prep school. Oooh, put those lurid expectations to bed, guys.

Teen girls in the normal rhythm of girls’ activities, until a saucer-eyed, sun-deprived weirdo appears, and ‘mysterious’ Goth goings-on reduce the population slightly, friends lose weight, people are decidedly less outgoing, and the school admins seem to be in permanent hibernation, so lax are they at noting the fishy stuff transpiring under their obliviousness.

The vibrant coeds think the creepo newbie might be…a…vampire!   Moths emerge from the odd-looking white-skinned student who sets friend against friend, class against class.

Script not scary, effects not interesting, relationships (or near-) among the nubile pretties not going anywhere very cataclysmic, titillysmic or rhythmic. Moth-eaten script more than mothy. Not even any pseudo-analytic jibber-jabber. Put some lubricant on this one’s corners: It all creaks.

Three major divas in the picture. A maybe-crush between Sarah Bolger, Rebecca, and Sarah Gadon, Lucie, goes nowhere, an unwrit song. [After all, it is a girls’ boarding school.]  The mystery student enters. Taddah.   This new student/wraith, Ernessa (Lily Cole), looks …uh, weird.

Rebecca believes she is a vampire intent on stealing Lucie’s affections.  It won’t displace the equally uninteresting but better wardrobe “Hunger Games.” Avoid, especially if you are a teenager, in a boarding school, an adult–or none of the above.