You might expect a moth's journal to contain entries like "11pm: Flew into lightbulb," but you'll find no such nonsense in Mary Harron's psychological horror The Moth Diaries, the trailer for which has just arrived online.
This is the tale of Rebecca (Sarah Bolger), sent to boarding school ("My father had just died; my mother was a wreck") and having her world rocked by the darkly mysterious and obsessive Ernessa (Lily Cole). "Cooped up here, you girls all get so close, and all that emotion can turn toxic," says English teacher Scott Speedman.
Think that sounds like 19th century Gothic novella Carmilla? Well done, take a house mark. That's exactly what's going on here. The girls are studying Sheridan LeFanu's spooky classic in their English class, so the parallels are entirely deliberate, although whether The Moth Diaries is actually a vampire story remains ambiguous.
This might all sound like LeFanu for the Twilight tweens, but, at least from the look of the trailer, the emphasis seems to be on proper psychological tension and chills, and the clip makes sure we know that Mary Harron was the writer and director of American Psycho. We're promised sex and blood, with Cole explaining that, "Some people find great joy in the prospect of death".
"My mother she butchered me, my father he ate me," Cole sings. We don't get to hear what her sister did. US audiences will possibly get to find out on April 20. We're still awaiting a date in the UK.
If you fancy reading Carmilla, it's in LeFanu's In A Glass Darkly. Or it's online at Project Gutenberg.
