Starry Eyes - A Complex and Bleak Look at Mental Illness and Hollywood
Would you do whatever it took to get your dream job? Giving up your individuality, your friends, your self respect? Seems like an easy no, but maybe it’s not that simple.
“Ambition – the blackest of human desires. Everyone has it, but how many act on it?”
Starry Eyes was directed and written by Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer and premiered in 2014. It stars Alexandra Essoe as our lead Sarah.
Premise:
Sarah is living in LA, working as a waitress, and basically treading water. She’s done auditions but never managed to snag a role. She’s surrounded by friends who are competing against each other to get to the top of the food chain and they all spend every night drinking and talking about projects that never seem to get made.
Sarah attends an audition for a horror movie through Astraeus Pictures and while her initial read-through goes badly – she has a breakdown in the bathroom, screaming and pulling out her hair leading the casting director to call her back in and ask her to redo her breakdown in front of them. Sarah is reluctant but does it, laying on the floor screaming and pulling at her hair.
The production asks her back for a second read through much to Sarah’s joy. But when she arrives she’s asked to get naked and becomes seemingly hypnotized as she writhes and growls, fully naked in front of a flashing light.
During the third audition the producer insinuates that she needs to have sex with him to get the role. She flees, leaving behind a leading role that could lead her to fame. But as she sits around the pool, watching her friends get drunk and make promises they won’t keep, Sarah second guesses her decision to run.
Will she give up everything for this role?
“Show me the girl I thought you were. Let me see the real Sarah.”
What I loved: (FULL SPOILERS)
Why does no one talk about the transformation scenes in this movie? It should be up there with The Fly and An American Werewolf in London. After Sarah makes her decision to go ahead with the producer, she quickly deteriorates. Her lips and nose are peeling and chapped, her hair falls out, she vomits up maggots (which, by the way, she actually put real bugs in her mouth and threw them up to make the scene even more realistic), her fingernails fall off. It’s horrifying. And at the end she’s buried under ground and tears through a skin like fabric, pulling herself out of the dirt shiny and brand new. It’s all completely horrifying and SO WELL DONE.
The kill scenes in this movie are super intense as well. Sarah is told by Astraeus Pictures that to fully transform and get the role she must make a sacrifice. Sarah goes to her friend’s house and murders them all. One scene involves her smashing a girl’s head in with a hand weight. It seems to go on forever and it’s hard not to look away. And when she murders Erin, a friend who has been particularly harsh to her, it takes a long time. At first she slices her cheek open, then stabs her repeatedly in the stomach, and when she realizes Erin is still alive, she suffocates her with a plastic bag. Sarah has become completely unhinged at this point and watching her go from a slash to the face that seems to shock her that she could be capable of that type of violence, to the never-ending barrage of a weight into someone’s head as Sarah fully gives in is a fascinating watch.
Sarah is obviously our lead, and the story revolves around her and Alexandra Essoe is incredible in this role. She also fully lets herself go, succumbing to the role of Sarah. It’s beautiful and terrifying to watch. But outside of Sarah, this movie has lots of great performances. Louis Dezseran plays the Producer and has a lot of long monologues where he gazes at Sarah with these soulful eyes. It’s hypnotizing to watch and an outstandingly creepy performance. Maria Olsen as the Casting Director is also stunning. While she doesn’t have many lines, she’s constantly there in the background staring and it’s completely unnerving.
There’s a lot to love about this movie, but there’s also a lot to think about. I’m watching this in 2020 on the other side of #MeToo as men in Hollywood, left, right, and center are being called out for sexual abuse, intimidation, and harassment. Reading a few interviews, it seems the directors didn’t see Sarah as a victim when they created it. Because realistically, Sarah made her own choices. No one really forced her into anything, they suggested and poked and prodded, but ultimately, it’s Sarah who goes back to the Producer despite all her friends telling her HELL NO. Sarah knew what she was getting into, but it didn’t matter, she wanted that starring role, come hell or high water.
My interpretation of it is seeing Sarah as a victim. But not of sleazy Hollywood, but of mental illness. From the very opening of the movie we can see Sarah is struggling. She loses her temper and pulls on her hair to the point of pain, a common form of self-harm. She studies her body obsessively in the mirror, perhaps a sign of body dysmorphia. There’s also her hyper focus on this role and doing anything to get it, another sign of obsessive anxiety. But no one seems to spot this mental illness or do anything to help her. I see everyone around her just either ignoring her mental illness warning signs, or taking advantage of them.
The Casting Director only calls Sarah back when she witnesses Sarah have a form of panic attack in the bathroom. She sees her as weak and malleable, sees her mental illness something to take advantage of.
So, sure, Sarah may not be the “victim” in the sense of Hollywood taking advantage of her sexually. Sarah knows every step of the way what she’s doing and why she’s doing it. She clearly says yes to the producer, and returns to him after thinking it all through, granted she is on drugs at the time so we can make a point there that she is not technically clear of mind when she agrees. When she is transforming she hears her phone ring knowing it’s the production team and drags her decomposing body down the hallway in a harrowing shot, so much pain just to answer the phone. She knows that fame and a leading role is on the other end. Hell, she kills all her friends without much convincing.
But Sarah is absolutely a victim of mental illness that has perhaps been controlling her, her whole life.
Starry Eyes is a complex and bleak movie with one hell of a transformation scene that I think should go down in horror history. It’s not for everyone, but it’s one damn fucked up ride.
“It’s time to become one of us, it’s time to be remembered.”
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