Review of Starry Eyes (2014) by Harry W — 08 Feb 2016

Having no idea what to expect from Starry Eyes, I watched it purely due to recommendation from its Australian home media distribution company, Monster Pictures.

Due to being a low-budget film, Starry Eyes clearly has limitations on how much ground it can cover within the confines of its production. As a means of ensuring that it makes it to a fair length, the scenes are stretched on quite a bit and the pace of the feature is slow. This means that by the point that Sarah is offered and completely accepts the role of the film she campaigns for, the film is already half-over. The majority of the time watching Starry Eyes is spent merely waiting for something to happen while momentary elements of psychological thrills occur even though they are of no relevance to the plot building, merely resulting in a lot of extended periods of dialogue dragging on in front of the same basic scenery over and over again. During all this, the entirety of the horror is merely implied and so when Sarah's insanity begins to unravel into a physical manifestation of actual horror, this is when everything completely falls apart. For the majority of the film there is no telling whether the horror depicted in the film is genuine or if it is merely part of the collapse of Sarah's psychology which leaves it ambiguous whether Starry Eyes is a horror film or a psychological thriller. Since nothing really happens in the story aside from the tale of a young girl pursuing a role in a film and some senseless moments of arbitrary horror cliches, the latter should be the correct presumption. But it later turns out that everything is actually happening, and that makes the least sense of anything in the film.

When the film loses sense of any kind of story and changes path to be about some kind of cult, it completely becomes a different film. It becomes much worse as there is no longer an actual narrative in the film but rather a series of senseless horror scenes crammed together to create a bloody climax. Frankly, Starry Eyes ends up as a completely incomprehensible collection of random death scenes with a lack of respect for the audience's intelligence that leaves the experience most unfulfilling.

Clearly an amateur production, Starry Eyes is not capable of hiding its limitations. Though the screenplay is forgivable, it does feature a lot of conventional character archetypes and rather cheap dialogue. One line in the film is said by the Producer in regards to horror films in general: "This industry is a plague of unoriginality" which turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy when you consider the fact that Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer couldn't bother to put an actual story into the film. It leaves the actors to have to have to work with a lot of artificial material during.

But Starry Eyes suffers in not just the narrative department as a result of its amateur nature. In one scene, Sarah answers her phone during a call but you can clearly see on her phone screen that nothing more than a blank background appears despite the sound effects suggesting that someone has called her. Another scene depicts Sarah getting into a scuffle with her boss Carl in which he attempts to remove a basket of fries from her hands and after he does he throws them towards the camera as if it is a natural part of the scuffle despite it clearly not being. It's moments like these which help to break the illusion of reality in Starry Eyes and make it less credible than its senseless plot already leaves it to be.

The musical score in Starry Eyes is the one aspect of the feature I would call brilliant. For the majority of the film is maintains a feeling of traditional horror while in a handful of moments it evokes the feeling of a John Carpenter film from the 70's or 80's. The work of Jonathan Snipes on Starry Eyes' score suggests he is the major talent in the film who really has the potential to go somewhere with his career, and he fuels the film with both atmosphere and nostalgia with a soundtrack which is really worth noticing.

As well as that, Starry Eyes is a fairly effective visual experience. The colour scheme in Starry Eyes is captured nicely. The film seems consistently buried beneath a layer of shadow which varies during a lot of scenes, and though there are some moments where it can be a little dark it works to build atmosphere most of the time. The cinematography is directed very well and works alongside the mood of the film.

Yet since the entire film revolves around the main character, it leaves Alex Essoe to tie the film together with her leading performance. Despite the premise turning in all kinds of senseless directions, Alex Essoe follows the narrative wherever she must and does it with passionate dedication for the material. Sinking into the depths of her character, Alex Essoe perfectly enscapsulates the feeling of vulnerability in the role of Sarah. She creates a sympathetic protagonist for the story and progressively captures the insanity of the part as things proceed. She progressively becomes a more dark and twisted character as the film goes on, and you can tell by the tension in her line delivery and her facial expressions that she truly has a dedicated grip over. Alex Essoe works to prove herself in Starry Eyes in the same way her character has to within the narrative, and she comes out shining on the other side even when faced with the heavy burden of such lacklustre material.

Starry Eyes offers a fairly solid leading performance from Alex Essoe and a showcase for the magnificent music talents of Jonathan Snipes, but with a slow-moving story which turns from having no horror one minute to making no sense the next, it collapses down on its directionless roots.