How far would you go for fame? Would you debase yourself? Would you alienate yourself?
Would you lose yourself?
Sarah wants to become a famous actress, but between her dead-end job, her unsupportive friends, and the lack of apparent prospects, fame seems to be little more than a pipe dream. Things start to look up, though, when she auditions for the film The Silver Scream by Astraeus Pictures, a powerful company which seems to cater to the Hollywood elite.
That audition sends Sarah down a rabbit hole of madness as she is urged to open herself to the potential to "transform", and ultimately she is forced to decide how far she is willing to go to earn her big break.
Starry Eyes (2014) is an American supernatural horror film written and directed by Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer. It stars Alex Essoe, Amanda Fuller, and Noah Segan, and is noteworthy for having been partially funded through a successful Kickstarter campaign.
This film contains examples of:
- Ambition is Evil: The Central Theme of the movie is how much someone would put themselves through to achieve their dreams, regardless of the amount of humiliation, self-destructiveness, or moral disintegration involved.
- Asshole Victim: Let's face it, most if not all of Sarah's friends are either pretentious, unsupportive, competitive, catty and/or generally selfish. Even Tracy, who seems to be one of the nicer ones by comparison, doesn't try to understand Sarah's predicament and may or may not have spilled the beans about the Casting Couch on purpose. So, naturally, most of them get messily killed off in the third act as a sacrifice. The only one spared is Tracy, who is instead taken out with a Kiss of Death after Sarah's 'rebirth'.
- Bald Mystic: Sarah's resurrection causes her to lose all her hair.
- Barbell Beating: After her body and sanity begin deteriorating, Sarah murders her housemates, including one she graphically bludgeons with a small dumbbell.
- The Beautiful Elite: Astraeus Pictures seems to produce these.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Maybe Tracy, Sarah's room mate. She seems nicer in comparison to her other friends, to the point where Sarah is willing to talk to her about the Casting Couch, but we find out she has a problem with loose lips. It's not fully clear whether she simply Cannot Keep a Secret or she is a genuine gossip, but in any case she is not spared either.
- Body Horror: After Sarah accepts the producer's deal via performing oral sex on him, her body starts to deteriorate, including the loss of her hair and fingernails and vomiting maggots. It is implied that this is because she is resisting the "transformation".
- Body Motifs: Hair. Sarah has a habit of ripping hers out as a form of Self-Harm, and it starts falling out as part of her transformation. After she is 'reborn' she is completely bald, and the final scene has her put on a wig that the producers gave her as a gift.
- Burger Fool: Sarah's job at Big Taters is dispiriting, hopeless, and involves her wearing a degrading uniform and being groped by creepy older men.
- Came Back Wrong: Sarah is resurrected in a ritual that leaves her healthy, but hairless and able to devour souls.
- Casting Couch: Invoked in stages. While Sarah's first audition doesn't include sexual favors, her second requires her to disrobe in front of the casting directors, and the third comes with an expectation that she have sex with the producer.
- Deal with the Devil: What Sarah's deal with Astraeus Pictures amounts to, in the form of a Casting Couch with the producer.
- Disproportionate Retribution: After Sarah decides to embrace her transformation, she brutally murders her (admittedly fake) friends.
- Evil Is Hammy: While he never raises his voice, the producer delights in devouring every bit of scenery in his office the second he lays his eyes on Sarah. This serves to make him a lot creepier and more Obviously Evil.
- Fan Disservice: Yes, Sarah is an attractive woman who wears nice dresses and has nude scenes. No, very little of it is appealing. Take your pick between the Casting Couch scenes, Sarah's physical decline in various states of undress, or her killing Tracy with a Kiss of Death while fully nude after her resurrection.
- Fanservice with a Smile: Sarah works at a restaurant called Big Taters that is pretty much a Hooters Expy.
- Foreshadowing: During her physical decay Sarah starts to hallucinate, seeing a vision of herself seemingly dolled up as if for an awards ceremony. The final scene has her put on the same dress and Astraeus Pictures pendant she was wearing in the vision, as well as a wig styled in similar curls. She was seeing herself after being reborn.
- Gorn: Apart from all the Body Horror, Sarah's rampage at the end is violent. She takes a weight and caves one of her friends' faces in, leaving nothing but a pulpy, gory mess behind.
- Horrible Hollywood: Even outside of the demonic sacrifices and possession, all of Sarah's friends are unbearably competitive, pretentious, and/or bitchy.
- Mystical Hollywood: Hollywood here is horrible to an outright demonic level.
- Obviously Evil: Astraeus Pictures. Their official symbol looks more at home in an occult ritual than it does for a movie studio, their tones range from condescending to creepy, and they do everything in their power to make Sarah uncomfortable. The producer takes it up a notch: he's a hammy, Faux Affably Evil old man dressed in black, rants about how Hollywood is filled with "rats", and coerces women into having sex with him in order to get the roles they want.
- Pet the Dog: Erin may have spent the majority of the movie being a terrible friend to Sarah, but she does display genuine concern when she turns on the light and sees Sarah's deteriorated face. Too bad for her Sarah is gone mentally.
- Religion of Evil: Astraeus Pictures turns out to be a cult of people who worship a god named Astraeus, who offers success and beauty, apparently in exchange for human sacrifices.
- Room Full of Crazy: Sarah's bedroom is covered in black-and-white pictures of celebrities plastered on the walls. While normally it would simply be a hint at characterization, it's a clue at how obsessed she is with getting a role and what she'd do to accomplish it.
- Sanity Slippage: Sarah starts to show a few signs of it after the second audition, particularly once she laughs at one of her friends getting a bloody nose. After going through with the Casting Couch Sarah not only deteriorates physically but mentally, becoming a volatile Mood-Swinger who has odd visions. This culminates in her killing her friends in a bloody manner. She technically gets better by the end, but uh, that might not be a good thing.
- Self-Harm: It's established early on that Sarah has a habit of ripping her hair out in frustration, particularly after failing auditions. It's a bit of a red flag when the producers not only express interest in her after her latest episode, but ask her to repeat it in front of them.
- Sinister Nudity: The film concludes Sarah accepting the producer's Deal with the Devil and being reborn as a beautiful, naked, succubus-like superbeing. She remains nude for most of the finale, but it's played for horror rather than titillation, for Sarah has clearly had the last of her humanity driven out of her - a fact she proves by using her newfound powers to deliver a Kiss of Death to Tracy while still completely naked.
- Succubi and Incubi: What Sarah's metamorphosis ultimately transforms her into. She becomes an almost textbook example of a Dungeons & Dragons-style succubus, complete with long, sharp nails, enhanced strength, emerald-green hypnotic eyes with huge irises, telepathic domination powers, perfect beauty, and soul-sucking kiss. The only thing missing is the wings.
- True Art Is Angsty: Invoked. The producers lose interest in Sarah until they see her freaking out in the bathroom and ripping out her own hair, at which point she is invited back.
- Villain Has a Point: There's no denying that the producer is an evil, greedy, pretentious asshole, but his Breaking Lecture to Sarah does raise a few valid points.Producer: You can go into the ground to be forgotten forever or you can be reborn. Did you expect it to be painless, that it would be easy, that you'd simply wake up one morning with everything you ever wanted laid out before you? I told you Sarah, dreams require sacrifice. And so do we. I can give you what you want Sarah, but you need to embrace who you really are. It's time to become one of us. It's time to be remembered.
- With Friends Like These...: This goes both ways. Sarah's friends are generally selfish, uncaring of her dreams, and try to undermine her at every turn, but at the same time, Sarah purposely distances herself from them.
