The Moth Diaries [Review]
The Moth Diaries is directed by Mary Harron and based on a novel by Rachel Klein of the same name. In the film I saw a story struggling to be told but being torn in too many directions without really making a choice, and hampered by clunky dialogue and jarring editing.
The Moth Diaries suffered from it’s potential. Each time an interesting theme or idea began to develop it was cut short, quickly moving on to a new idea. The film consistently set up and then disappointed expectations.
What I saw was a story about a girl, Rebecca (Sarah Bolger), struggling with the death of her father, then losing her closest friend Lucie (Sarah Gadon) who she had built her world around. For Rebecca this isolation was too much. Perhaps the prospect of losing Lucie to the strange new girl Ernessa (Lily Cole) brought up too many feelings about the tragic loss of her father. This could have been an exciting psychological thriller about a girl who loses her grasp on reality and her dark fantasies become indistinguishable. Instead the film moved along in half-measures, never really committing to one idea but sampling many, and never really getting anywhere.
The film is quite short at just under an hour and a half but it would have benefited from some added length. More time spent exploring Rebecca’s fantasies and watching her personally struggle with the idea of her school succumbing to forces of the supernatural, and questioning her sanity would have given the film much more substance.
The Moth Diaries is in theatres now.
I’d love to hear from those of you who have seen the film, and would be especially interested to hear from those who have also read the book. Let me know what you think in the comments.
