Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Nov 22, 2018 11:52:57 GMT
I know I haven't posted in this thread for a while, and there have been lots of movies I've seen and not posted any review for in here...but last night I rewatched a 2014 movie on TV titled Starry Eyes and I thought that if any movie was going to draw me back into writing a review in this thread again, it'd be this movie - as I think it deserves it.
Pretty much immediately I thought this would be my sort of movie, as it begins with tinkly music that is also quite creepy-sounding and I think it set the mood well straight off the bat. It, combined with the red-coloured credits appearing over the nighttime, creates an unsettling atmosphere. We meet Sarah Walker (not to be confused with the Sarah Walker played by Yvonne Strahovski in the spy TV series Chuck), played here by Alexandra Essoe - who I knew nothing about before this movie...but after watching this movie I'll never forget her or her performance.
Her character is in her underwear, checking out her body (as I'm sure quite a lot of people must do...but especially those who hope to be an actor/actress like Sarah does) and does the first of what will turn out to be many hair-pulls. It's just this thing she does. She works as a 'Big Taters' waitress, where she's forced to sing cringy jingles to customers.
And also wear a midriff-showing tight T-shirt and tight pants (which her pervy boss, Carl, regularly checks out as she's walking away - usually to check her phone for callbacks in the hopes of scoring an acting audition).
At a party, we meet Sarah's friends - Tracy, Danny, Ashley, others I can't remember the names of, and the passive-aggressive Erin, who is seemingly always putting Sarah down (but 'nicely') or at least making her have self-doubt, so I quickly labeled Erin as 'mean girl'.
Sarah finally scores an audition with 'Astraeus', and the crying girl who was seen before her isn't exactly reassuring.
Sarah then meets 'The Casting Director' and 'The Assistant'. We never learn their names...which is just as well, since they both quickly got on my nerves. The woman was freaky (and wears a possibly Satanic necklace), but the dude (both his voice and the way he spoke) was just plain annoying.
Sarah auditions and it seems to be going fine, but they abruptly end it with the typical "We'll be in touch." line (which usually means that these types won't be) and Sarah gets disheartened, goes to the bathroom and has a bit of a fit, swearing, slamming her bag into the stall and pulling at her hair. There was a really neat shot here, I thought, which involved us seemingly looking down through Sarah's hair.
When she emerges, creepy-looking woman is standing right outside and wants her to come back in to explain what she was just doing. At first, Sarah's self-conscious about it and not really willing to share what is sort of 'private' with these two weirdos.
When they ask her to repeat what she was just doing, Sarah's not really into it. However, once it appears as though they're going to dismiss her again, she gathers the courage to repeat the fit she was having earlier...and then some. She really goes for it, hair-pulling, screaming, convulsing on the floor. Obviously this gets the two weirdos' motors running, as they sound like they might actually call her this time when they say they'll 'be in touch'.
Sarah's clearly happy at this, despite having had to share a piece of herself with these strangers. I automatically feel sorry for her, the fact she had to do this to get ahead. And things are only going to get harder for her from here. Her boss isn't happy about her being focused on getting a callback - which she does. The jerk on the phone (the dude with the annoying voice/speech pattern) is short with her when she's just expressing her happiness at hearing from them. I already didn't like him, but he just becomes more unlikeable on the phone (even when she apologies to him, he cuts her off - which he just complained about her doing to him). I feel really bad for her when she's jumping up and down, happy about getting a second audition, because she's as yet unaware of what she's going to have to give up/give of herself to these jerks.
Her boss, Carl, has a talk with her about prioritising things, which ends up with unintended result of her quitting her job to focus on what she really wants. With her next audition, she wanders into a darkened room where she can't see anything...that is until the jerks rudely shine a spotlight in her eyes. They tell her to lower her hand that she's using to protect her eyes and she does so. They then tell her to strip. She reluctantly does so.
They want her to be 'free'. And what follows can only be shown, rather than described, as there are flashes (presumably them photographing her) and we get brief glimpses of her...then things get kind of freaky.
They seem to like her 'free' self and she leaves so overjoyed that they did. The first time I think it becomes clear that these people and what they've been getting Sarah to do is taking its toll on her is when she witnesses one of her friends (the blonde one, Ashley) injure herself at a pool. Sarah's reaction? To laugh. Her other friend, Tracy, looks at her like 'What is her problem?' and is suitably freaked out (at both Ashley seriously hurting herself and Sarah reacting inappropriately to it).
Sarah eventually gets a call to meet 'The Producer' and...wouldn't you know it? He too is a freak. He gives Sarah a pep talk about 'ambition' and how few act on it. He wants to know if she is a 'doer'...then proceeds to feel her up.
Sarah, quite rightly, isn't having any of that and tries to leave...but they've locked the door. Eventually she gets out of there, but she's fairly certain she's blown her chances. The mean friend continues to be mean, while Sarah's nice friend, Tracy, joins her under the bed sheets (not in that way). She's trying to comfort the crying Sarah and once she learns what she was asked to do, she quite rightly points out that that was wrong of them to ask her to do. Sarah's not very nice to this friend of hers who is only trying to help, though. Sarah's then forced to ask Carl for her job back. Tracy might be a 'nice' friend (at least when compared to Erin)...but she apparently can't keep her mouth shut, as she shares with Danny what Sarah had told her. He chats with her, and yet again what someone tries to tell Sarah doesn't exactly get through to her the way it was intended. I think he also gets her high on ecstasy, which probably wasn't the smartest move. Their chat leads to her calling to meet with The Producer again. They call her back, arrange another meeting and after another talk about what she's willing to do to get this part, she...gives him a blowjob.
When we cut to her waking up later, she's not looking so good.
In fact, she's looking awful. And her boss, who tries to get her to go home, gets into a fight with her (over chips/fries), she slaps him and then gets fired as a result.
One of her 'friends' later on is trying to take advantage of her being out of it by filming her for Danny's movie or whatever he's trying to make. Tracy sticks up for Sarah, but then Sarah shoves her and they have a bit of a fight. Sarah goes to Astraeus, attacks a dude outside there and apologises. She's eventually back home, convulsing, barfing, losing hair and just looking godawful. It's quite the transformation, to see her going from looking like this...
To looking like this...
She loses it at poor Tracy again, who is actually a good friend, having covered her rent and stuff. Sarah's teeth are looking horrible, she's vomiting up creepy crawlies and goo/blood, lifting decayed fingernails off her fingers and apparently reeks (which, when you look at her, isn't that hard to believe). They have another fight. Sarah eventually receives money for what she did for Astraeus and throws it in poor Tracy's face when she's expressing only concern for her friend (especially after she sees - and smells - the current state Sarah is in).
Sarah later dreams of her much prettier self (freaky woman's in her dream too, stuffing whatever in her mouth).
She proceeds to get into a fight with mean girl Erin...who turns out to not be so bad after all, when she expresses concern for Sarah once she gets a good look at her current self and wants to get her to a hospital. By this point they've gotten into a fight about Erin being in Danny's movie (and what she did to get there) vs what Sarah did with the Producer (because, yep, Erin knows about it too. That Tracy - such a blabbermouth. Or maybe it was Danny this time? I forget). It ends with Sarah slashing Erin across the face with a knife and then stabbing her repeatedly. One of the dudes walks by, doesn't really notice what's going on and greets Sarah simply with, "Whassup?". Then comes arguably the grossest/nastiest scene in the movie, where Sarah picks up a dumbbell and proceeds to bash poor Asheley's face in until it's reduced to bloody gory mush. We actually didn't get the full version of the 'dumbbell scene' on TV here either time I watched the movie. After the first time, I found the scene in full online. There's also a GIF of it...but be warned, it's VERY unpleasant (hence me spoiler-tagging it within the spoiler tags I already have for this review).
Poor Ashley. She didn't deserve that^ (and after her nose had only just started healing too!).
The "Whassup?" dude from before sees this^, tries to run, but slips and gets repeatedly stabbed in the back by Sarah for his trouble. He dies screamingly.
Erin is crawling along the floor, so Sarah finishes her off by suffocating her with a plastic bag over her head.
Next on her kill list is Danny. They chat, and she says there's only one thing in the whole world that she wants. After she's revealed to him in full, she stabs him. She then collapses, I think (my memory's a little foggy on this part), folks in hoods emerge from the shadows and cart her off, perform some Satanic ritual, she's covered in plastic, buried and then gets 'reborn', digging herself free. She's naked and bald now (points for making the baldness look pretty decent, as usually the person's head looks so bulbous because their hair is stuffed under a bald cap. I don't know if they did this with the actress here too and used CGI to smooth it out or if she really did cut her hair, but it looked so much better/realistic then it does in a lot of instances, I thought).
She's left with a Happy Birthday present, which she carries home (nakedly). Tracy finds Sarah's naked, bald self lying on the bed and apparently they used to get up to some stuff...but Tracy doesn't want to do that now. However, Sarah proceeds to kiss her...and soon blood is gushing from Tracy's mouth and she's soon dead (?).
The present turns out to be a dress, a wig and a necklace with the same symbol on it that she saw the freaky woman wearing at the start.
This is where the movie ends, with Sarah having officially sold her soul to get ahead in Hollywood. I get what the movie was trying to say, and I think I wasn't caught off guard by how literal it went with that message this time (having already seen the end previously and thus being prepared for it). Originally I really didn't like where the movie goes in the latter half...but I don't mind it quite as much now. Though I am curious if it would've been better not to go so far into the 'supernatural' realm.
Anyway, the music was creepy, the atmosphere was creepy, several of the characters were creepy and I appreciate movies that actually put in an effort to be creepy (most seem to think that just blood and gore is 'creepy'...but it's not. And that's why I originally felt a bit letdown by the latter half of the movie - the fact that it resorted to blood/gore/a high body count, when prior to that it had been so unnerving without any of that stuff). You knew something was off pretty early on in the film, and it keeps you unsettled until you discover what was really going on.
Alexandra Essoe deserves all the praise for her performance here. I've heard the term 'brave' used numerous times to describe actors/actresses who 'ugly themselves up' for roles, but it's not just the unbeautifying of her that demands attention. It's the way she throws herself into the role so completely. She embodies this character 100% and I think it's a shame she hasn't gotten more recognition for it (to my knowledge, anyway). If nothing else, watch the movie for her performance. It's quite something to behold.
Hope you don't mind me copying & pasting a quote of yours from that 'Dark Side of Hollywood' thread you started, petrolino , but I figured if there was a right time to respond to it...it was now/here.
I'll keep an eye out for those^. I really want to watch Alexandra Essoe (now going by Alex Essoe, I see on her IMDB page) in some other stuff, as her performance here was so impressive, I hope she continued to get work which utilised her acting abilities as well as this movie did.
Her character is in her underwear, checking out her body (as I'm sure quite a lot of people must do...but especially those who hope to be an actor/actress like Sarah does) and does the first of what will turn out to be many hair-pulls. It's just this thing she does. She works as a 'Big Taters' waitress, where she's forced to sing cringy jingles to customers.
And also wear a midriff-showing tight T-shirt and tight pants (which her pervy boss, Carl, regularly checks out as she's walking away - usually to check her phone for callbacks in the hopes of scoring an acting audition).
At a party, we meet Sarah's friends - Tracy, Danny, Ashley, others I can't remember the names of, and the passive-aggressive Erin, who is seemingly always putting Sarah down (but 'nicely') or at least making her have self-doubt, so I quickly labeled Erin as 'mean girl'.
Sarah finally scores an audition with 'Astraeus', and the crying girl who was seen before her isn't exactly reassuring.
Sarah then meets 'The Casting Director' and 'The Assistant'. We never learn their names...which is just as well, since they both quickly got on my nerves. The woman was freaky (and wears a possibly Satanic necklace), but the dude (both his voice and the way he spoke) was just plain annoying.
Sarah auditions and it seems to be going fine, but they abruptly end it with the typical "We'll be in touch." line (which usually means that these types won't be) and Sarah gets disheartened, goes to the bathroom and has a bit of a fit, swearing, slamming her bag into the stall and pulling at her hair. There was a really neat shot here, I thought, which involved us seemingly looking down through Sarah's hair.
When she emerges, creepy-looking woman is standing right outside and wants her to come back in to explain what she was just doing. At first, Sarah's self-conscious about it and not really willing to share what is sort of 'private' with these two weirdos.
When they ask her to repeat what she was just doing, Sarah's not really into it. However, once it appears as though they're going to dismiss her again, she gathers the courage to repeat the fit she was having earlier...and then some. She really goes for it, hair-pulling, screaming, convulsing on the floor. Obviously this gets the two weirdos' motors running, as they sound like they might actually call her this time when they say they'll 'be in touch'.
Sarah's clearly happy at this, despite having had to share a piece of herself with these strangers. I automatically feel sorry for her, the fact she had to do this to get ahead. And things are only going to get harder for her from here. Her boss isn't happy about her being focused on getting a callback - which she does. The jerk on the phone (the dude with the annoying voice/speech pattern) is short with her when she's just expressing her happiness at hearing from them. I already didn't like him, but he just becomes more unlikeable on the phone (even when she apologies to him, he cuts her off - which he just complained about her doing to him). I feel really bad for her when she's jumping up and down, happy about getting a second audition, because she's as yet unaware of what she's going to have to give up/give of herself to these jerks.
Her boss, Carl, has a talk with her about prioritising things, which ends up with unintended result of her quitting her job to focus on what she really wants. With her next audition, she wanders into a darkened room where she can't see anything...that is until the jerks rudely shine a spotlight in her eyes. They tell her to lower her hand that she's using to protect her eyes and she does so. They then tell her to strip. She reluctantly does so.
They want her to be 'free'. And what follows can only be shown, rather than described, as there are flashes (presumably them photographing her) and we get brief glimpses of her...then things get kind of freaky.
They seem to like her 'free' self and she leaves so overjoyed that they did. The first time I think it becomes clear that these people and what they've been getting Sarah to do is taking its toll on her is when she witnesses one of her friends (the blonde one, Ashley) injure herself at a pool. Sarah's reaction? To laugh. Her other friend, Tracy, looks at her like 'What is her problem?' and is suitably freaked out (at both Ashley seriously hurting herself and Sarah reacting inappropriately to it).
Sarah eventually gets a call to meet 'The Producer' and...wouldn't you know it? He too is a freak. He gives Sarah a pep talk about 'ambition' and how few act on it. He wants to know if she is a 'doer'...then proceeds to feel her up.
Sarah, quite rightly, isn't having any of that and tries to leave...but they've locked the door. Eventually she gets out of there, but she's fairly certain she's blown her chances. The mean friend continues to be mean, while Sarah's nice friend, Tracy, joins her under the bed sheets (not in that way). She's trying to comfort the crying Sarah and once she learns what she was asked to do, she quite rightly points out that that was wrong of them to ask her to do. Sarah's not very nice to this friend of hers who is only trying to help, though. Sarah's then forced to ask Carl for her job back. Tracy might be a 'nice' friend (at least when compared to Erin)...but she apparently can't keep her mouth shut, as she shares with Danny what Sarah had told her. He chats with her, and yet again what someone tries to tell Sarah doesn't exactly get through to her the way it was intended. I think he also gets her high on ecstasy, which probably wasn't the smartest move. Their chat leads to her calling to meet with The Producer again. They call her back, arrange another meeting and after another talk about what she's willing to do to get this part, she...gives him a blowjob.
When we cut to her waking up later, she's not looking so good.
In fact, she's looking awful. And her boss, who tries to get her to go home, gets into a fight with her (over chips/fries), she slaps him and then gets fired as a result.
One of her 'friends' later on is trying to take advantage of her being out of it by filming her for Danny's movie or whatever he's trying to make. Tracy sticks up for Sarah, but then Sarah shoves her and they have a bit of a fight. Sarah goes to Astraeus, attacks a dude outside there and apologises. She's eventually back home, convulsing, barfing, losing hair and just looking godawful. It's quite the transformation, to see her going from looking like this...
To looking like this...
She loses it at poor Tracy again, who is actually a good friend, having covered her rent and stuff. Sarah's teeth are looking horrible, she's vomiting up creepy crawlies and goo/blood, lifting decayed fingernails off her fingers and apparently reeks (which, when you look at her, isn't that hard to believe). They have another fight. Sarah eventually receives money for what she did for Astraeus and throws it in poor Tracy's face when she's expressing only concern for her friend (especially after she sees - and smells - the current state Sarah is in).
Sarah later dreams of her much prettier self (freaky woman's in her dream too, stuffing whatever in her mouth).
She proceeds to get into a fight with mean girl Erin...who turns out to not be so bad after all, when she expresses concern for Sarah once she gets a good look at her current self and wants to get her to a hospital. By this point they've gotten into a fight about Erin being in Danny's movie (and what she did to get there) vs what Sarah did with the Producer (because, yep, Erin knows about it too. That Tracy - such a blabbermouth. Or maybe it was Danny this time? I forget). It ends with Sarah slashing Erin across the face with a knife and then stabbing her repeatedly. One of the dudes walks by, doesn't really notice what's going on and greets Sarah simply with, "Whassup?". Then comes arguably the grossest/nastiest scene in the movie, where Sarah picks up a dumbbell and proceeds to bash poor Asheley's face in until it's reduced to bloody gory mush. We actually didn't get the full version of the 'dumbbell scene' on TV here either time I watched the movie. After the first time, I found the scene in full online. There's also a GIF of it...but be warned, it's VERY unpleasant (hence me spoiler-tagging it within the spoiler tags I already have for this review).
Poor Ashley. She didn't deserve that^ (and after her nose had only just started healing too!).
The "Whassup?" dude from before sees this^, tries to run, but slips and gets repeatedly stabbed in the back by Sarah for his trouble. He dies screamingly.
Erin is crawling along the floor, so Sarah finishes her off by suffocating her with a plastic bag over her head.
Next on her kill list is Danny. They chat, and she says there's only one thing in the whole world that she wants. After she's revealed to him in full, she stabs him. She then collapses, I think (my memory's a little foggy on this part), folks in hoods emerge from the shadows and cart her off, perform some Satanic ritual, she's covered in plastic, buried and then gets 'reborn', digging herself free. She's naked and bald now (points for making the baldness look pretty decent, as usually the person's head looks so bulbous because their hair is stuffed under a bald cap. I don't know if they did this with the actress here too and used CGI to smooth it out or if she really did cut her hair, but it looked so much better/realistic then it does in a lot of instances, I thought).
She's left with a Happy Birthday present, which she carries home (nakedly). Tracy finds Sarah's naked, bald self lying on the bed and apparently they used to get up to some stuff...but Tracy doesn't want to do that now. However, Sarah proceeds to kiss her...and soon blood is gushing from Tracy's mouth and she's soon dead (?).
The present turns out to be a dress, a wig and a necklace with the same symbol on it that she saw the freaky woman wearing at the start.
This is where the movie ends, with Sarah having officially sold her soul to get ahead in Hollywood. I get what the movie was trying to say, and I think I wasn't caught off guard by how literal it went with that message this time (having already seen the end previously and thus being prepared for it). Originally I really didn't like where the movie goes in the latter half...but I don't mind it quite as much now. Though I am curious if it would've been better not to go so far into the 'supernatural' realm.
Anyway, the music was creepy, the atmosphere was creepy, several of the characters were creepy and I appreciate movies that actually put in an effort to be creepy (most seem to think that just blood and gore is 'creepy'...but it's not. And that's why I originally felt a bit letdown by the latter half of the movie - the fact that it resorted to blood/gore/a high body count, when prior to that it had been so unnerving without any of that stuff). You knew something was off pretty early on in the film, and it keeps you unsettled until you discover what was really going on.
Alexandra Essoe deserves all the praise for her performance here. I've heard the term 'brave' used numerous times to describe actors/actresses who 'ugly themselves up' for roles, but it's not just the unbeautifying of her that demands attention. It's the way she throws herself into the role so completely. She embodies this character 100% and I think it's a shame she hasn't gotten more recognition for it (to my knowledge, anyway). If nothing else, watch the movie for her performance. It's quite something to behold.
Hope you don't mind me copying & pasting a quote of yours from that 'Dark Side of Hollywood' thread you started, petrolino , but I figured if there was a right time to respond to it...it was now/here.
I have 'Starry Eyes' on dvd. Breakout genre role for the talented Alexandra Essoe.
Essoe's co-star Amanda Fuller is a fearless actress who's been a major asset to shock horror cinema these past few years. If you've not seen it, check out Simon Rumley's disturbing revenge drama 'Red, White & Blue' (2010). Fuller's also in E.L. Katz's cult thriller 'Cheap Thrills' (2013). She hails from Sacramento, California and knows the turf.