Rebecca is suspicious of Ernessa, the new arrival at her boarding school. But is Rebecca just jealous of Ernessa's bond with Lucie, or does the new girl truly possess a dark secret?
With bubbles of nascent arousal frothing at the film's feminine surface, Moth Diaries' commercial potential is likely to hinge on whether or not audiences can stand to be confronted with the confusion they felt as adolescents.
It offers glancing pleasures of the atmospheric kind – the impact is the equivalent of a filmy cobweb brushing against your cheek. It tickles more than it bites.
63
Slant Magazine
Andrew Schenker
This is one vampire film whose sexless, generic ending betrays a promise of revisionist complexity.
Her (Harron) torpid adaptation of Rachel Klein's novel about female sexual desire, jealousy, death wishes, and vampires at a girls' boarding school defeats Harron's talent for exploring darkness on the edge of kinkiness.