By Matt Harries
Reader advisory: Moderate spoilers ahead. For a spoiler-free appraisal of Starry Eyes, see Ben’s review from Celluloid Screams 2014.
We live in an era obsessed with viral fame and hollow glory. The overwhelming desire to be seen, to be watched and admired by approving peers, is seemingly universal. Fame, or some reduction of it at least, is just a few mouse clicks away. Increasingly people are famous simply for being famous, spawning imitators who also desire to achieve this rarefied state. Of course most who try to scale this cloud-obscured peak fall away into nothingness, their names and faces and the desperate deeds they bent their backs to accomplish quite lost in the amnesiac black hole of the past. Still though, they climb, and fall, and climb and fall. Some reach their goal through talent or infamy. They join the legions of those referred to as ‘stars’; for as those of us firmly rooted to the earth gaze up, we see their names, their images, broadcast across screen and billboard. Is it the promise of some petty measure of immortality that drives people to find stardom? In a time when fame is less about what you do than how many people see you doing it, what the hell is fame anyway? Is it a kind of place to aspire to or a state of being? Starry Eyes puts its own grim twist on the story of how humanity pours itself into the void searching for these transient, nebulous things; fame and stardom.
One such seeker is Sarah. Her life’s dream is achieving Hollywood fame as an actress, and so she attends auditions, applies for more auditions, and supports herself through the unedifying means of working in the fast food industry. Her life is as clichéd as any in a town where, as Tater Tops boss Reggie puts it, “do you think you’re the only waitress I had who was destined for stardom?” Sarah struggles just like thousands of girls doubtless do, but she goes further than most in the way that she chooses to deal with her failures. She is a trichotillomaniac, that is, she habitually pulls her hair out, both as a means of releasing stress but also seemingly to punish herself. Her peer group does not make the cycle of audition and rejection any easier to deal with. Smug and self-obsessed, they question her choices and the roles she auditions for. But when she is asked to audition for Astraeus Pictures, a once successful but somewhat notorious studio, these comments increasingly seem borne of envy.
After an unsuccessful first reading for Astraeus, Sarah seems destined to join the great ranks of the rejected. In the toilet cubicle she erupts into hair pulling once again. Somehow this is noticed by the sinister Casting Director. It is in this moment of despair, frustration and anger that the transformative journey that makes up the bulk of the film really begins. “I want to see your fit,” intones the Casting Director. Returning to the audition room, Sarah attempts to rediscover the state she enters during her hair pulling moments, and induces what appears to be a seizure. Eventually, sensing something grotesquely promising, the shadowy Astraeus call her back. During the second audition, stood in darkness and bombarded by a huge flashing light, Sarah debases herself for the camera. As she writhes under the harsh, pounding glare of the light, exhorted to push herself further, we catch a glimpse of a different Sarah; black eyes, sharp teeth like a shark. The pounding flash illuminates a fleeting moment of almost orgiastic blood lust, gone just as quickly as it appeared. A chilling hint at what awaits her, should she find the will to undergo the necessary transformation.
Although ostensibly a tale of one young woman and the question of how far she would go to realise her dreams, Starry Eyes somehow seems to channel the collective experiences of the great morass of humanity that has struggled for recognition in the lands beneath that old wooden sign over the years. The running joke is that these young women and men that optimistically flock to Hollywood are chewed up and spat out into the less glamorous sister industries of pornography and advertising, while the chosen few rise above into a different plane of existence as ‘stars’. Starry Eyes turns these people, represented by Sarah, into unwitting victims of a kind of sinister cult. Heading this cult is the Producer himself, the very epitome of the honey tongued, walnut tanned veteran. He speaks to Sarah of the true focus of the picture for which she has been so strenuously been auditioning; not horror as such, but ambition: “the blackest of human desires”. “Cut through the fog of this town, and you get desperation”, he tells her. It is this desperation, this thing which drives the young and beautiful to push their physical and moral limits, which the Producer wishes to capture. But of course in order to prove she is ready he demands even more from Sarah; sex – her body the offering which will prove her devotion to him and his desire to transform her. I wonder how familiar a sacrifice this has been over the years?
The story of the ingénue corrupted by dark forces is not a new one. The comparison which jumped out at me was David Lynch’s classic of surrealist-noir Mulholland Drive. Like Sarah, Naomi Watts as Betty is sweet, idealistic and seemingly innocent. Like Betty, Sarah finds herself at an audition with a middle aged man resplendent of tan and with a somewhat sleazy countenance. Whereas Betty (or at least the initial incarnation of her) shows admirable adaptability to come through the difficult audition with flying colours, Sarah’s own trajectory is bound up with a hideous cycle of physical change, as she becomes further alienated from her shallow group of friends. The elements of body and transformative horror are painfully well observed. From her initial willowy beauty she becomes a repulsive figure; vomiting worms in the bath tub and leaking blood and other fluids. What this grisly journey represents is not clear – perhaps it is symbolic of the kind of pressures which drive attractive women throughout high profile entertainment to irrevocably alter themselves through surgical methods. Or perhaps it simply represents a sloughing off of normality, a necessary part of the transition into true stardom?
Indeed it is difficult not to view much of Sarah’s story as a metaphor. A metaphor for the process of selling oneself, of acceding to the wishes and desires of others to further their own ends; for the cynical and brutal way the dreams of the young are exploited by a shadowy elite. Starry Eyes chooses a ‘pay off’ for the story – namely the revealing of this elite in the form of the Astraeus cult, who seem to consist of wealthy looking white people, the demographic widely held to form the vast majority of the power players in mainstream cinema. Compare this to Mulholland Drive, which eschews such linear storytelling by utilising Lynch’s trademark multi-layered, multi-dimensional approach, which renders any attempt to apply allegory to proceedings virtually impossible. Which approach works best is open to personal preference, but I think the makers of Starry Eyes should be applauded for attempting to fully flesh out the story and not devolve into clunky surrealism – even if this means the film loses the ineffable sense of the mysterious that so marked Mulholland Drive.
There are plenty of noteworthy performances here, although quite rightly Alex Essoe will get the plaudits for a role which oscillates between wide eyed and Bambi-like to sinister and necrotic. I wonder how much of Essoe herself went into the role, how much of it was an amalgamation of generations of accumulated experience? Strong cameos from the likes of Maria Olsen, brilliantly sinister as the stony faced Casting Director, Louis Deszeran as the Producer, and Fabianne Therese as the bitchy Erin add much to what could easily have been a story of one girl’s nightmare, but which somehow becomes a much wider comment on an industry that thinks nothing of sacrificing its own flesh and blood.
All told, Starry Eyes is a real success story in an era of ever-diminishing returns in the horror world. Grim and gory, affecting and damning, it takes a scathing look at the dynamics of the ‘movie business’ and the ‘fame game’, as well as the cost of pursuing one’s dreams in a world dominated by a predatory elite. Well acted, well written and with a genuine shock appeal, it is surely a film to champion for all fans of the genre.
Starry Eyes is out now on Region 2 DVD from Metrodome.