Doctor Movie: Episode 298: Starry Eyes

Show Notes

Join Doctor Movie for a look at your favorite movies from behind the steering wheel. We take a look at the cost of fame and fortune with the disturbing film Starry Eyes. This is a brilliant little film that is not to be missed.

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Hello, once again, everybody, welcome back to Doctor Movie, your favorite show on the road.

Let's get this show on the road.

Hey, I got another episode for you here, and this is a first time watch.

I wanted to see this when it came out, and I just never got around to it for some reason.

I don't know, you know, that just works out like that sometimes.

But finally got to check it out, and wow.

I'm kind of giving some things away here, but man, this movie delivers.

So what is the price of fame?

What would you give up for your moment of fame?

Or if you were promised success, abundant success, what would it cost you?

What would you be willing to give up?

That's the story line behind today's movie, Starry Eyes, from 2014.

It's a horror fantasy movie.

I don't know so much about the fantasy part.

It's pretty horrific, any way you want to look at it.

Ooh, solid little flick, man.

And I kind of regret that I waited this long to see it, because it's one of those that you really don't forget.

And so let's talk about this one a little bit.

We got a synopsis here, it says, A hopeful young starlet uncovers an omnimous origins of the Hollywood elite and enters into a deadly agreement in exchange for fame and fortune.

Wow, I mean, let's go all the way back to, I mean, you can go way back, even back to Faust, right?

Crossroads, you can go to, not the Britney Spears movie.

Found of the Paradise.

Take your pick, right?

This movie kind of, it really works now, because you're hearing more and more about this weird elite groups in Hollywood.

So this is not a new thing.

It's been going on for a long time.

And, oh, Rosemary's Baby, that's the other one I was trying to think of.

So yeah, what's the sacrifice for your success, right?

This is directed by two fellas, Kevin Kosh and Dennis Widmer.

Both worked on the Pet Sematary remake.

There's some other things they've done together.

And let's see, like I said, 2014.

Wide-o-watch, it's harrowing, surreal, and exciting.

I don't know about exciting.

Great camera shots, great acting for the main lead.

The atmosphere was simply creepy and superb.

Yeah, absolutely.

This one, don't know what they're talking about, because they said it's a great listen.

So, yeah.

Starry Eyes is surprising good slow burn about ambition and for what some may be the true price of fame.

Absolutely.

I mean, that's the thing about this.

You can point the finger at the Illuminati or these secret societies that we hear about.

You can even tie it into the whole Epstein thing.

You can tie it into the Weinstein thing.

I mean, this kind of runs the gambit of the horror stories that you hear of young up and coming stars or actors and how their lives can be ruined for their chance for fame.

And yeah, man, this one sticks with you.

As far as a cast, I'm only going to bring up one person, and that's Alex Esso.

She plays our main character, Sarah.

Wow!

You want to talk about a broad range of acting.

Impressive.

Very impressive.

The other ones are, you know, it doesn't require them to do as much.

They're kind of your...

It's kind of that group of people that I've never been a fan of, because I remember when my wife was in college, she lived in a house with a guy that was in the drama team, right?

The theater group.

And when you get a group of these people together that really think they're on another level than you, yeah, I'm not a fan of these kind of people.

And it's kind of the same scenario.

All these people are actors, are trying to be producers, trying to be directors, trying to make independent films, and they're all kind of supportive of each other, but at the same time, they're jealous of each other, and they kind of knock each other.

There's one other character here that's Aaron, is the name of the character, who kind of competes with Sarah all the time and says, sorry, I got that role.

I know you wanted it, but he picked me to be it instead.

Always kind of rubbing her face, always kind of downplaying how she looks, how she dresses, all that kind of stuff, right?

So kind of jealous or a bully, however you want to look at it.

And our main character, Sarah, replies to an ad that she sees for a movie called Silver Scream.

And she goes in to audition, and she's got this quirk that she does whenever she gets anxiety.

She kind of grabs her head and yanks on it and starts pulling her hair out.

And it's just a control thing, right?

I mean, that's what it is.

And after she does it, she kind of comes back to Earth.

She goes in to audition.

The auditions are cold.

She's sitting there waiting to audition, and another lady runs out and she's crying, and she's just beelining out of there.

Sarah goes in.

She's trying her best to be polite, be funny, get their attention, and they don't even pay attention to her one bit.

They do the lines.

She reads them well, and they just say, thank you, we'll be in touch.

She goes out.

She's upset.

She goes to the bathroom.

She starts having a fit.

By the time she calms herself down, like I said, with this traumatic hair pulling thing, one of the women that was in there that was auditioning her, auditioning her?

Yeah.

Says, maybe we didn't see everything we wanted to see.

So they call her back in, and they get her to have an anxiety attack and do this thing that she does and how she reacts to it, which is horrifying.

Because she's never done this in front of people, but she does it.

They're kind of impressed.

As the movie goes on, she keeps getting calls where they want her to come back for more auditioning.

At the same time, she's working at a little place called I don't know, Tater's or something.

It's supposed to be like a Hooters, but they serve potatoes, which is funny because we've got a place around home called Prater's Tater's, and that's what they serve.

I mean, they serve baked potatoes, and these things are humongous.

And they don't have like, you know, chicken parmesan baked potato, right?

I mean, so it's not just a baked potato.

There's more to it.

But this place is obviously at Hooters Ripoff because she's having to wear the white shirt and, you know, the real tight kind of, not yoga pants, but more like spandex kind of pants.

So it's all a, you know, the tacky, male interest, waitress kind of look, right?

And she's trying to get out of there.

She didn't really like the job.

The boss keeps kind of eyeballing her.

Even though he never really reacts or tries anything, still you can feel that this guy is checking her out when he shouldn't be.

And she's hoping that this job will get her out of this dead-end job.

And she ends up going back and forth.

She ends up quitting her job, thinking this is going to work out.

And she goes back for another audition, and she gets taken up to this main room where she meets the producer.

And he starts making a move on her, starts trying to put his hand in her garage.

And she leaves.

And this guy is saying, I can give you whatever you want, whatever you ask for, wherever you dream.

I can make it happen.

So, but she runs out, right?

She goes back, she's horrified, all this.

She tries to get her job back.

She does.

And, but then again, all of her friends or all the people she lives with keep kind of agging it on.

She tells her best friend that she lives with about what happened.

And in her mind, she's kind of thinking, well, what if I would have done it?

Would things have changed for me, right?

So you're dealing with all this stuff that we're pretty much seeing now.

And again, this is nothing new.

It's a shame it's going this long, but people are finally bringing it out.

But this is a reaction to that, I'm sure.

And she decides to go back and do whatever she has to do to get the fame and fortune.

And after that, it's kind of like a surreal dream.

This movie is like, it's a wild combination.

It has elements of Lynch in it, it's got elements of Argento in it, it's got elements of Cronenberg.

So if you take the three of those, you can kind of imagine what you're getting here, right?

And it kind of falls in there.

The Cronenberg thing really kind of is like the fly.

Because after she does this night and you get the hallucination kind of dream, she wakes up the next day in her bed, and she is not well.

And she's getting really sick, she starts looking really bad.

You know, things are definitely wrong.

And as this goes on, she gets sicker and sicker.

It's almost like Jeff Goh blooming the fly, right?

Because her fingernails start falling off, her face is just getting gaunt, she's throwing up, and one time she throws up in the bathtub, and it's maggots.

So you can get a little fulchy in this.

It's disturbing.

It really is.

And like I said, it's a good slow burn, because once you hit this point, you are in.

You are not...

So she's trying to call and say, hey, I don't know what's going on, if somebody would call me back, but I'm really sick.

So she's trying to get hold of the producer and find out what's wrong.

And she says she's dying.

And when she finally talks to the producer, somebody's like, what price do you think you have to pay to be reborn?

And they even give her a vision of what the future can look like.

And she's standing in the front of her bed.

She's laying down, and she sees herself standing there, which does not look like her at all.

I mean, gorgeous, beautiful, pompous actress.

She's got her wall covered with all the old actresses, the Garbos, the Hayworths, you know, all those actresses on her wall.

And that's who she dreams to be like, is these iconic, you know, ladies, you know, actresses from years before.

And from there, she starts going down this path to where...

She starts knocking off all of her roommates, one by one.

And it's all because of who she's becoming.

She's paranoid, she thinks these people are holding her back.

And this is what's required of her to move forward, get all these people, all this trash out of her life.

It's messed up.

It really is.

And again, that's kind of where you start seeing some of the Argento type stuff, because there's some kills in here that remind me of some stuff you've seen in some of his classic stuff.

And from there, it kind of breaks off into a ceremony, which you have to have this, right, towards the end, where you kind of see where things happen.

It's just like in Martyrs, or even Rosemary's Baby.

You know, you kind of get this thing, and it kind of gives you a vision of where things are going.

So I don't want to ruin the ending of it.

I think I've given you enough to chew on.

But again, I can't say it enough.

Alex Esso's performance in this is staggeringly great.

I can't even believe it's the same person from transformation to transformation.

It's impressive.

So, if this sounds interesting to you, again, check it out, you won't forget it.

It stays with you and it really drives home these scars that these actors and actresses deal with if they've had to go through these types of situations.

It's messed up, man.

It's a messed up world.

It's a shame that you can't just get by on your marrying, right?

There's got to be a cost.

So, there you go, folks.

That's my take on this one.

This is a four out of five all day long.

Solid, solid flick.

And pretty disturbing, so just be prepared.

You kind of have to prepare yourself for this one.

All right, folks, that's it for this one, and we will check you later.