The Moth Diaries

The Moth Diaries is a 2011 gothic horror film written and directed by Mary Harron, based on the 2002 novel of the same name by Rachel Klein. The film stars Lily Cole, Sarah Gadon, Sarah Bolger, Judy Parfitt, and Scott Speedman. The plot follows Rebecca, a teenage girl who suspects that Ernessa, the new student at an all-girls boarding school is a vampire. An Irish-Canadian venture, the film was co-produced by Samson Films and Mediamax. The Moth Diaries premiered at the 68th Venice International Film Festival on 6 September 2011, and was theatrically released in Canada on 6 April 2012 by Alliance Films and in Ireland on 24 May 2013 by Lionsgate. The film received generally negative reviews from critics. Plot At the Brangwyn School, an exclusive boarding school for girls, 16-year-old Rebecca Cantor writes her most intimate thoughts in a diary. Two years earlier, Rebecca's father, a poet, took his own life by slitting his wrists. Her mother transferred Rebecca to the school, hoping to help her daughter escape the memory of her father's death. With the help of her best friend and roommate, Lucy Blake, Rebecca soon recovers. The following year, a mysterious dark-haired girl named Ernessa Bloch comes to Brangwyn. Lucy quickly becomes best friends with Ernessa and grows distant from Rebecca, who feels uneasy about Ernessa's presence. She tries to confront Lucy about her involvement with Ernessa, but Lucy dismisses her concerns as jealousy. The girls' hallmate Charley is expelled for throwing a chair through a window after taking drugs provided by Ernessa at a party. Another friend, Dora, falls from the roof outside Ernessa's room after she and Rebecca peek into Ernessa's room one night and see it empty except for a cloud of moths, and a teacher who was harsh on Ernessa is found murdered in the woods. Tension starts to grow at the school. Rebecca is suspicious of Ernessa, who she sees walk through a closed window and linger near the doors of a basement where the students are forbidden to go. She sees troubling similarities between Ernessa and Carmilla when reading the story for class.