The Moth Diaries
Metascore
38 out of 100

Generally unfavorable reviews - based on 13 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 13
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 13
  3. Negative: 5 out of 13
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  1. Boxoffice Magazine
    Reviewed by: Joseph Jon Lanthier
    Apr 15, 2012
    80
    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.
  2. Movieline
    Reviewed by: Stephanie Zacharek
    Apr 19, 2012
    70
    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.
  3. Slant Magazine
    Reviewed by: Andrew Schenker
    Apr 14, 2012
    63
    This is one vampire film whose sexless, generic ending betrays a promise of revisionist complexity.
  4. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Jeannette Catsoulis
    Apr 19, 2012
    50
    Roiling with jealousy, suicide and latent lesbian urges, The Moth Diaries dances on the border between hallucination and reality without fully committing to either. Yet the film's narrative frailties are offset by impeccable performances and a consistently eerie tone, helped along by a location as forbidding as the "Overlook."
  5. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    Apr 14, 2012
    50
    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.
  6. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Corliss
    Apr 23, 2012
    40
    All three give performances that would suit a better movie than this pallid shocker with little heart and no bite.
  7. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Neil Young
    Apr 15, 2012
    40
    Suspenseless, uninvolving and underdeveloped, it wastes the talents of an almost entirely distaff cast that deserves much stronger material.
  8. Variety
    Reviewed by: Justin Chang
    Apr 15, 2012
    40
    The body count runs high at Brangwyn boarding school, but tension, surprise and viewer interest are the real casualties in The Moth Diaries.
  9. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Scott Tobias
    Apr 18, 2012
    33
    Writer-director Mary 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.
  10. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Nick Schager
    Apr 17, 2012
    30
    There's no surer way to murder horror than to literalize it, a mistake incessantly made by The Moth Diaries.
  11. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Peter Hartlaub
    Aug 9, 2012
    25
    Way too serious for its own good. The best vampire movies are some combination of sexy, scary or campy. This one is 100 percent earnest, and the hazy mysteries taken from Rachel Klein's book aren't strong enough to keep the audience engaged.
  12. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Joe Neumaier
    Apr 19, 2012
    20
    Director Mary Harron ("American Psycho") can do little with this bloodless drama.
  13. Time Out New York
    Reviewed by: David Fear
    Apr 17, 2012
    20
    They've taken an intriguing story about female neuroses with gothic overtones and turned it into a graceless, butt-ugly attempt at Twilight-lite.

User Reviews

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User Score
6.5 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 4 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. ILHM
    7
    When the new girl in school starts to come between Rebecca and her best friend, Lucy, she begins to suspect that there is something far more sinister behind their relationship. Rachel Klein's modern update on traditional Gothic storytelling is brought to life in Mary Harron's screen adaptation of THE MOTH DIARIES, from 2011. Rebecca and the other girls transpose their teenage anxieties like anorexia, depression, suicide, and sexuality on to their ghostly classmate as a means of dealing with their internal struggles. While Ernessa may not be seen physically drawing the blood from her victims, her presence at the school certainly saps the other girls of their strength and happiness, leading them in to despair. The lesbianic undertones that are present in the plot also draw strongly from the classic tale of Carmilla, which is frequently referenced throughout the girls' schoolwork. Harron takes a timely approach in developing the characters and mood of the picture, but unfortunately, her deliberate pacing begins to wear during the long periods of inaction and leaves the audience feeling deprived as the film draws to its anticlimactic ending. Still, we are left on a positive note, having grown with Rebecca as she overcomes her pain and loss to find a renewed strength in herself. THE MOTH DIARIES ultimately falls short of becoming a modern classic, but it does provide another unique and emotionally charged vampire tale in the same vein as LET THE RIGHT ONE IN.… Full Review »
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