Starry Eyes
(2014) 98 Min.
Rated: NR (Nudity, Very gory)
Country: USA / Belgium
Director: Kevin Kolsch, Dennis Widmyer
Stars: Alex Essoe, Amanda Fuller, Noah Segan, Pat Healy
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★★★☆
A woman desperately wants to break into the film business as an actress.
Synopsis:
Sarah Walker (Essoe) is a struggling actress struggles to land a job while working at a Hooters-like restaurant, called Big Taters, by day as a waitress. At times of stress she suffers from Trichotillomania and pulls her hair.
Sarah lives with a roommate named Tracy (Fuller). She goes to a friends party where her friend, Erin, passive-aggressively mocks her for having won the same role in a commercial.
Sarah auditions for a horror movie called the Silver Scream. During the audition she does her best, but feels like she failed and goes to the bathroom to scream and tear out her hair in frustration.
The Casting Director overhears her in the bathroom and asks her to perform her fit in front of them. Sarah does this and writhes on the ground screaming in anguish. She gains the interest of the casting director and gets a call back later on.
Carl (Healy), her Big Taters manager, has a talk with Sarah about her priorities and bringing her cell phone to work. Sarah decides instead to quit her job at Big Taters and focus on acting.
At her callback, Sarah is led into a dark room with a spotlight put on her. The assistant asks her to remove her clothes and she does so reluctantly. The Casting Director then tells her she must let herself go if she “truly wants to transform into something else”. Sarah starts to enjoy herself as the scene flashes between black, white, and images of hooded figures and a beastly face. Sarah notices the Casting Director wears a pentagram-like symbol around her neck, but doesn’t really acknowledge it. She’s happy for the rest of the day.
She goes for a third meeting and this time she meets the Astreus pictures producer. He talks to Sarah about people who are ambitious enough to not talk but do. And he implies that the way Sarah can get to be in this leading role is to have sex with him. She refuses and runs away.
Later she asks for her job back at Big Taters. Carl makes her ask back nicely before giving her the job back reminding her that there are plenty of girls who would love to work there.
Later she’s hanging out with her friends. One of her friends, Danny (Segan), had promised to give her a part in his movie that originally was going to Erin, but Sarah sees them grow closer and feels like it’s a lost cause. She realizes that she won’t have an opportunity like the one the Producer is offering.
She calls them and is invited to the Producer’s home. She performs oral sex on him while people in black robes and masks watch on.
She wakes up in her own apartment and feels ill. She gets fired from her job at Big Taters after slapping Carl. Sarah gets worse and worse. She vomits food and fights with her roommate Tracy.
Sarah vomits again in the toilet and sees that she is balding and her fingernails are falling out. Her mouth is spilling blood and there is puss and gore between her legs. She sinks into the bathtub only to vomit there and see maggot-like worms.
She gets a phone call from the Producer and tells him that she’s dying. He tells her that he said it wouldn’t be easy. He asks her to meet with them and become one of them.
Before she does, however, she goes on a rampage killing all of her friends. She stabs one in the face and chest, crushes the skull of another with a weight, stabs a guy she was sleeping with and also stabs the friend who was making a movie.
After the deaths hooded figures appear and lead her away. They hold a quick ritual for rebirth and Sarah claws her way out from under the earth into the sunlit day. There is a gift for her there from the studio. She takes it and goes home.
Tracy finds her in bed and pulls the sheet off her to reveal a manniquin-like Sarah, beautiful, bald and pristine. She asks Tracy to lay down with her and kisses her sucking out her life and smearing blood everywhere.
Sarah then cleans up and opens her gift. She puts on the dress, makeup and wig. She admires herself in the mirror as the film ends.
Review:
There have been plenty of films done about the Hollywood machine and how soulless it can be. But I think this film takes the idea and gives it a fresh look with the transformation of one woman from waitress to studio starlet. It’s a bit of a slow film and there’s no real horror for the majority of the film until about the third act.
This film touches on concepts from films like Rosemary’s Baby. In it we find all is not as it seems and there are unseen puppeteers who are the masterminds behind the success of actors and actresses. The supernatural is blended quite well with the everyday.
I think Sarah’s character transformation in the film was done particularly well. A mousy quiet actress who suffers through her passive-aggressive dreamer friends and her dead end job. Sarah’s struggle is one anyone can relate to and it becomes all the more believable that she cracks and starts to dispatch them one by one.
This is another film with a great synth score and some well done effects. It’s a visceral film that deserves at least one look.