STARRY EYES (2014)
Directed/Written by: Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer
STARRY EYES is truly brutal, as I was hoping, for several
reasons. The first being the poster/box art for the film. It’s a picture of a
beautiful female face, with skin of deathly alabaster white-blue, staring
upwards at the sky. There is an innocence in her swirling and odd, off-color
turquoise eyes; a purity. While each eye has an inverted star carved around it,
she still looks up, her expression not one of terror or agony, but one of an
almost ecstasy of sorts, replete with a soothed Mona Lisa smile to
finalize this portrait of paradox, for that is exactly what this film is. It is
a near brilliant, all too realistic (in certain ways) portrait of a paradox.
The other reason?
Well, it really has nothing to do with the movie, per se. There’s an old,
beautiful Roky Erickson love song called “Starry Eyes,” that I absolutely
adore. I do wonder on some level if the title may be an homage of sorts to the
amazing Mr. Erickson. Anyone who knows anything of Roky’s long, weird life will
understand exactly why that would be.
Ok, enough yapping.
Onto the film itself. It is about a girl in her mid-20’s named Sarah (Alex
Essoe), who is living in Los Angeles, in a house with several other “fame
hungry” friends, every one of them in L.A. to become actors, directors,
screenwriters - - - they all have their individual goals, but are also all
fairly lazy and unmotivated, completely self-absorbed, and center their lives
on a party-all-the-time lifestyle. All but for the naturally awkward Sarah, a
very attractive, if somewhat plainish girl, who goes to tryout after tryout,
not a one of which comes through. She either freezes before the casting agents,
loses all affect while trying to remember lines, or shifts into a high-end
melodramatic style that is just a bit too much.
As the stress builds,
after each audition she fumbles, she goes into a private area (usually a
women's bathroom) and proceeds to release it, exploding into a state of primal
rage upon herself, ripping out handfuls of her own hair, shrieking at the top
of her lungs, and thrashing her body about everywhere. Then she pulls herself
together and goes home to her sickeningly non-empathetic friends (who
continually laugh and mock not only her audition choices, but her failures as
well). Then she goes to her hated job at “Tater’s” (an decent play on those
wretched “Hooters” restaurants), where she works for a sexist, manipulative
douche of a boss (played by Pat Healy, one of my current favorite indie-weird
actors), who basically tears her down into telling her she’s “always Tater’s
Girl first.”
As she begins to feel
evermore trapped, and act as though she is slowly shutting down inside, she
gets an odd email audition invite for a film called “The Silver Scream,” from
an apparently ancient and ailing indie-company named Astreus Pictures. She
blows off work to go to the audition, and tries out. The casting agents are
cold, weird, impatient, creepy, and serious, all quite intimidating to Sarah,
though she still does her audition, to which they are not thrilled. Sarah goes
into the women’s room and has her worst fit yet, which happens to be silently
witnessed by the female c.a. The agent is so impressed with Sarah’s explosion
that she asks her to come back immediately and do it again. Which she does,
this time going full-on primal, writhing around like a rabid beast as
she shrieks and tears at her skin and rips even more hair out. NOW they are
impressed. They want her to audition again, and give her a day.
Sarah excitedly rushes
home to tell her housemates (I say housemates because quite frankly, as
friends, they suck), who feign excitement for her, until they find out it is
for Astreus, after which they go right back to the mockery.
At the second
audition, she cautiously enters a pitch black room, when a spotlight suddenly
shines on her, and only her. She is asked by the casting agents, whose voices
command from the blinding blackness into which she cannot yet see, to “get
bare.” They tell her to strip, which she quite begrudgingly does, and they
speak to her in hypnotic tones as the spotlight begins to flash. This is,
visually, one of the strongest moments in the film, as with every strobe-like
flash of the light we see something is changing within Sarah. The
opticals here are amazing, as we begin to see flashes of something sharp-toothed
and long-clawed within each successive blast of light. And the c.a.’s speak to
her in an affectless, Neurolinguistic Programming-like manner, about the primal
being within and its importance, and that “Gateways will be opened.”
She immediately gets a
third callback. She goes and meets the head of Astreus Pics. He speaks of her
will, power, drive, determination, and “explains” the business to her, what a
vile system it indeed is, but how necessary as well. Then he basically asks for
a lil “couch-test casting,” to which she momentarily considers, then runs from.
But not before he has a chance to feel her up and rub his withered hand merely
once under her skirt and over her vag. While doing this, he whispers into her
ear “The Gateway Is Open.” After this incident, everything about Sarah begins
to change.
She wakes up off,
sick, out of sorts. She looks like she’s got the bird flu. She tells her
friends she may have the role, and about the attempted “couch-test,” which
apparently depends on whether or not she gets said role. Once again all her
shitty friends manage to do is be their usual unsupportive selves. So she goes
angrily to her job at Tater’s and is essentially forced to beg for it back.
Then immediately gets a text, saying shes got the part, and quits on the spot,
even smacking her manager in the face incredibly hard (for Pat Healy’s sake I
hope it was in one take) before storming out and going to Astreus Pictures.
From here on, every
aspect of her being changes. Her frail naivete becomes vicious, paranoid
madness. She begins to show signs of post-sexual abuse/rape trauma, her slight
flu progressing quite rapidly, her paranoia increasing exponentially. She keeps
calling Astreus Pictures, obsessively so, only to receive no answer. She finds
herself bed bound by her sickness, and runs into the bathroom just in time to
projectile vomit profusely. What is it she vomits up? About 5 gallons worth of
black, writhing maggots. But it doesn’t stop there. Her face is changing, her
hair falling out on its own. In fact, she’s losing everything made of carotene,
in one excruciating scene of slow fingernail violence. Her inner body develops
a sickening odor (which is crudely noted by a housemate), and a dreadful slime
begins to sluice from her nether regions.
Sarah begins to get
horrible, strange, and taunting calls from the Astreus CEO. He cackles at her
through her cellphone “You thought this would be painless, easy? Laid out for
you? You can die, or you can be reborn,” as she wanders the dark L.A. night
streets, confused and sick.
It’s just after a
viciously primal, bloody, unexpected attack on the “friend” who made the
unnecessarily cruel “vaginal stink” comment that the now rotting, demonic
looking Sarah feels the power and rush of what she’s been “working to achieve.”
This sends her on a lightning quick, Richard Speck-like rampage of incredibly
violent and gory murder of everyone in the house. She also learns along the way
just how difficult it is to snuff out a human being, but catches on pretty
quick.
As this is happening,
Astreus is performing some sort of odd ritual. Sarah is left alone, with the
one person that really did like her, and in fact even had unspoken affections
toward her, and she pounces and finally kills him. The ritual is then complete for
Astreus, the film ending in a truly inspired piece of filmmaking reminiscent
(to myself, anyway) of the Germanic-silent style from cinemas early days of
yore. Sarah is indeed literally reborn, growing from the mud (created from
clay), bald, naked, beautiful, taking in an old world with very new
eyes. This reborn Sarah is in her bed, under the covers, when the last
housemate comes home, her one supposed actual “friend” finding her. The girl is
hypnotized by Sarah’s new appearance, especially her magnificent eyes, as Sarah
draws her into the bed and sucks the essence right out of her.
SPOILER ALERT: Sarah has been reborn as Lilith, and is in fact the
possible anti-christ. The final frames of the film are dark, quiet, and
chilling, to say the least. It’ll have you thinking for days after.
Be warned, however.
This is an intelligent, dark, deep cautionary tale. This is not some slasher
junk, nor is it a standard splatter-flick (although when called for, it
delivers in spades). For as much as I’ve described above, I’ve left quite a bit
out. There are odd elements of other films within this. I could see hints of Martyrs,
Rosemary’s Baby, Contagion, Altered States, House Of The Devil, and several
other possible influences here and there, yet this is wholly original. It also
touches ever so perfectly on the difficulties and disillusionments of living a
motivated “starving artist” lifestyle, of what it can do, and does, to so very
many who let it. Of constantly trying only to receive disappointment in return,
of working around the work you have to do in order to survive just
enough to try to do what it is you want to do in the first place, regardless of
the medium. Truth be told, you could have made the characters painters,
writers, musicians, sculptors, performance artists, and still told the exact
same story. The fake fairweather friends who’ll use your shoulder like a ladder
in a heartbeat. It’s fukking cut-throat. Sarah’s anguish, frustration,
confusion, naivete, awkwardness, and desperation can be felt as well as
witnessed, due to Alex Essoe’s standout performance, as the film essentially
rests on her shoulders, and she carries it both effectively and intelligently. SEE
THIS FILM. I give it the highest of recommendations.
Bio: Vincent Daemon currently works for THE INTESTINAL FORTITUDE https://
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