Writing/directing team Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer helm a cautionary tale of selling out to success with this metaphoric, and fairly effective low-budget horror film.
Sarah is an aspiring actress, who has a tendency for physical self-abuse when she feels she's a done a bad job. This leads to a lot of torn hair and scratches, as she submits herself to the harrowing audition process in the land of sharks known as Hollywood. Like many young hopefuls, she shares a shitty apartment with too many roommates, and is surrounded by catty peers who are more frenemies than an actual support network. After a particularly callous casting director catches Sarah chastising herself in a bathroom after a failed reading for a low budget horror film, she is given a second chance. Wanting to see more of Sarah wallowing in pain, as she torments herself with self doubt, she is ultimately granted a meeting with the big head honcho producer. Here, she is given the chance to "just do" and "not talk" as far as showing her commitment to getting the role, and in La La Land we all know what that means. Put out...or get out. Sooner than we can say "the Devil made me do it" Sarah, who has undergone internal changes, and then, in horrifying ways, begins exhibiting the ugliness she has succumbed to, externally.
STARRY EYES is at first subtle, then slowly ramps up into a Satanic Panic homage not unlike the also-recent LORDS OF SALEM, albeit with a little more "bite" and graphic violence. Crowd funded via Kickstarter, it's a tight little film, with a solid cast that you may recognize from having seen work together in other DIY flicks that have been making waives (and deservedly so). Alex Essoe, our Sarah, is the newcomer to the gang, but Amanda Fuller, Noah Segan, Marc Senter, and Pat Heally have all worked together in various combinations in other dark-toned indy flicks like RED, WHITE, AND BLUE, CHEAP THRILLS, and THE INNKEEPERS.
STARRY EYES is definitely worth a horror fans' time and rental fee, and I'd say is surely a harbinger of greater things to come from the creative team of Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer.
Rating: 3.75 out of 5
~The Butcher
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