I’m not going to apologize for this review because I CANNOT stop apologizing to absolutely everyone at my new job, and I’m driving myself nuts. Still, I’m somewhat embarrassed about the quality of this post. Horror Month is kicking off not with a bang, but with a whimper. On the bright side, it could be worse.
I promise you Christa’s review is full of snark but lighter on the self-deprecation. Read her post here!
The Film:
Starry Eyes
The Premise:
A struggling actress gets an offer that seems too good to be true…because it’s an offer from Hollywood Satanists.
The Uncondensed Version:
Our story is your basic struggling actress plot but with a horror twist. Sarah is a waitress who works for what is essentially the Hooters of tater tots. She’s a fairly typical character except she isn’t very nice to herself, and does this rather painful-looking hair yanking thing whenever she messes something up.
It doesn’t help that her friends are kind of shitty, including a frenemy who rubs it in Sarah’s face when she gets a part they both auditioned for as well as that one creepy dude friend. The acting career isn’t really taking off, so Sarah jumps at the opportunity to star in the rather sketchy The Silver Scream. She’s desperate, so she doesn’t even care that the people she’s auditioning for are super judgmental and detached, telling her directly that she has to impress them or she’ll be forgotten like thousands of other girls. After presumably fucking up this audition, Sarah goes into the bathroom and does her hair-pulling routine.
Oddly, she is called back to the audition and asked to repeat the hair-pulling performance. Instead of being creeped out and getting the fuck out like a normal person, Sarah obliges. Even though she thinks the audition went horribly, she gets a call back.
The second audition is even weirder, and she has to get naked in a dark room while a camera takes her picture with a blinding flash. RUN, SARAH.
After all of this, Sarah gets a meeting with the producer who is, of course, a creepy old man. He goes on about people worshipping the god of debauchery and all of the weirdos in Hollywood before being a complete perv. Sarah hesitates to cross that line, but eventually returns as the lure of stardom is too great. During this second meeting, it becomes clear the producer is a Satanist or at least really into summoning demons and occult worship. Maybe I’m being unfair because I’m not really sure what a Satanist looks like or what a Satanist believes.
Shortly after, Sarah’s friends become concerned by her sudden sleazy/violent behavior. Things rapidly go from bad to worse, and we get our first truly disgusting scene of the film that involves pulling her own fingernails out, bleeding from everyfuckingwhere, and throwing up maggots. Honestly the fingernail part was the vilest bit of this film to me. If you can watch it without wincing, more power to you.
I suppose I shouldn’t give every last detail away, so let’s just say there’s a lot of bloody murder at the end. A LOT.
The Rating:
3/5 Pink Panther Heads
Eh…there was nothing in particular to dislike about this film, but I also didn’t get really into it. It’s nice that this was a horror story with a purpose, but I felt it was a bit lacking in oomph.
About halfway through, I wondered where all the blood and guts were and why no one had died yet. Admittedly it got pretty disgusting, but I had to wait a damn long time (those fingernails, man. Haunting my dreams tonight).
Idk, guys, have I just lost any semblance of an attention span?
Check out the brilliance that is Christa’s review here!
The Pink Panther Snipes Again 