Good concept, poorly executed.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Intent on winning the lead role in an upcoming horror film, an aspiring actress gradually surrenders herself to the increasingly bizarre demands of the film's casting agents and producer in this odd little film with some remarkable parallels to Nicolas Winding Refn's 'The Neon Demon'. The film's best asset is the 80s style synthesizer music score, which provides ample eeriness at key points. The other big highlight is Alex Essoe as the waif-like protagonist who undergoes some massive progressions throughout as she truly transforms, just like one of the casting agents say that she has to early on. On that note, it is the early scenes here that work best, most notably, the cold and uncomfortable initial two auditions with some elongated silences. Die-hard horror fans though might prefer the latter stages of the film since they are the wildest and goriest. They also make the least amount of sense, however, with the film never really exploring the details of the pact she makes to get the leading role, nor the cult that she gets embroiled with, an occasional visible pentagram aside. And yet, the film still essentially works even with such plot details left murky and ill-explained. This might not be the subtlest of films about being ruthless in order to get ahead in life, but it is certainly one of the most atmospheric and offbeat, leaving several images that are hard to shake from the mind.

Alex Essoe is a really good actress and she was brilliant in this. This move delves into the sometimes morally vague and downright bad things people feel forced to do in order to achieve their dreams of fortune and fame. This movie is better than most "seedy underbelly of Hollywood" type tales. It is better than The Last Tycoon (starring a young Bobby De Niro) and infinitely superior to the superficially pretty but bland and unrewarding Neon Demon. The plot is sort of predictable, but the performances and direction is really excellent, so that doesn't matter. I really liked it. There are lot of unprofessional and immoral demands on actresses that go unsaid and there should be more films like this.

This movie was very much hit or miss for me, but I enjoyed it overall. The plot is fairly classic and a little bit stereotypical — pretty girl working at a Hooters-esque restaurant in LA ultimately struggling to make it on the big screen. But I think it is a storyline that is used often since the possibility for desperate measures to be taken is so likely, as is the case here.There's some awkward, forced scenes — the first party scene comes to mind — and honestly I could take or leave about 90% of the supporting cast (all of her "friends", really), especially her "jealous" friend Erin (played by Fabianne Therese), but Sarah (played by Alex Essoe) was so well done I didn't mind.They pretty quickly set up Sarah to be very much a loner — surrounded by people but ultimately lost in her own mind and desires. Her job is degrading and unsatisfying, her friends are more concerned with their own lives for the most part, and she never seems too eager to be included, as if she knows she will be rocketing off to stardom any day now and doesn't want anything holding her back. She gets her audition for The Silver Scream and then things start to get weird, made obvious as soon as the female casting director calls her in for another look after she has an "episode" in the bathroom (she's frustrated that her casting call went so badly and starts to freak out, screaming and pulling her hair out). She does a pretty impressive re-do for both directors, rolling around on the floor and screaming and pulling at herself, and while she was hesitant at first, it's clear by the end that she's had a taste of the kind of desperation it takes to make it big and she's ready for more.Her next visit with the casting directors — her "transformation" — is pretty jarring and awesome. I liked that they kept things vague enough to leave you thinking, but the scene itself still made you uncomfortable. I also liked that the very fact that she showed up to this second call already demonstrated how willing she was to do anything — they treated her like garbage in the first call, and told her she was only invited back because of her episode, indicating from the get-go that they were more interested in her willingness to do anything than her talent, and yet she is eager and downright excited to go back."If you can't fully let yourself go, how can you ever transform into something else?"She soon gets called for a meeting with the producer, clearly a high honor. I couldn't get past wanting him to be played by Ray Wise, but I think Louis Dezseran does a good job of being the right combination of sleazy and all-powerful. Again, it is made clear pretty quickly that she needs to give up a part of herself — a part of her that has morals and standards — to get this role. You can tell that even though she walks out, there's a big part of her that hesitated. Her giving up the role means begging for her job back — a job she had dramatically quit not long ago — and you can see her sinking deeper into her willingness to give her very self up for stardom."I kind of feel I'm selling my soul already. So it might as well be for something I love."She, under the influence of drugs, finds her way to the producer's home for a second chance. It's a whole mess of occult references, sexual deeds, and initiation, and she is more than willing to say yes to anything they ask of her. She wakes up the next morning seemingly foggy on what happened, and this is when her physical transformation begins, setting off debilitating stomach pains, the loss of her hair (clearly symbolizing her previous self), and generally the crumbling of her body as a whole.She is seemingly desperate to know what is happening to her, and is convinced that she's dying, but she receives a call from the producer who tells her, in essence, that she can't expect the road to stardom to be easy, and that it — and they — require a sacrifice. She doesn't hesitate to accept this challenge and kill several of her friends, and the scene is GRUESOME to say the least, especially since there is barely any gore up until this point (aside from her transformation, which is also really disturbing). One killing in particular, where she takes a dumbbell to a girl's head, is INTENSE, and just her sheer determination and lack of emotion really seals the deal. She is absolutely cold-hearted.Soon after she goes through her final rebirth, which I thought was pretty neat, complete with her new birthday and her new eyes, and the killing off of the last remnant of her past life when she kills her roommate.Overall a pretty solid movie with an interesting, albeit overplayed, plot. I still thought it was a unique perspective on the concept of "horror" — passing by the fantastic to go after something that is much more pervasive, and much more real, in our every day society, even when it's on a smaller scale than vying for a role on the silver screen.

Sarah (Alexandra Essor, fearless), an aspiring actress, pays her bill by working at Big Tatters, a family restaurant with boobs where the waitresses wear potato-skin-inspired very tight pants. She shares a house with a bunch of morons and bitches, endlessly discussing the movie they will never shoot. For some obfuscating reason, the scene is in Los Angeles.Sarah gets an audition for "The Silver Scream", produced by Astreus Pictures, a once prominent company now on an eclipse but planning their big return to the horror genre. It does not go well and she throws a fit in the bathroom, banging her bag on the wall (with her cellphone in it, one presumes), screaming and pulling off her hair, a rather mild reaction after such a disappointment. Her rage attracts the attention of the casting director who's not played by a terrible actor and she's asked to replay her fit, only with epileptic shaking.By the time a disheveled Sarah walks the streets while synth music plays, two things have become obvious: the movie will follow the same Halloween- inspired horror nouveau template than features like The House of the Devil or Girl Walks Alone at Night, and it will neither be great or awful. But it has a certain something in the slow burn vein.At her second audition Sarah is asked to disrobe completely, which she does reluctantly at first, until she experiences some kind of an epiphany possibly induced by the flashing strobe lights. Are they trying to give her a seizure? The casting matron sports a pentacle pendant, so one knows that some cult is behind Astreus. Ominous name, check.Three being the charm it is, she's invited to met the producer, a libidinous creep who tells her in a conspiratorial tone things like "Ambition is the blackest of human desires" and "I want to capture the ugliness of the human spirit" before feeling her up. Being the epileptic goody-two-shoes she is, Sarah backs off and storms out. Her one female roommate who's not a bitch is appalled: "You don't mean sex!" she scoffs as if the casting couch was an alien notion in LA.Sarah takes the walk of shame, begs for her job back at Big Tatters and threatens to spiral into depression. She musters the courage, or is desperate enough, to beg Astreus for a second chance. At this point, one would be allowed to think of her as a tad irresolute.She goes to her meeting with the head of Astreus dressed as a hooker, because life is for doers, not quitters, and she also gets to meet his other head. "Show me the real Sarah", he says, to which she doesn't respond since her mouth is full. The producer has a pentacle tattoo and a very vulgar diamond watch. A masked silhouette observes Sarah, well, performing.Morning after is a bitch. She feels nauseous, gets fired, flashes her roommates and loses her hair while wandering the streets on obsessive dialogue loops. Visions of herself dolled up like a drag queen alternate with losing tooth and nails in he fashion made popular by The Fly. At the point her vagina bleeds and she throws up worms, one wonders what it was she actually swallowed the night before. Astreus explains her that she has to die for a new star to be born.But not before killing her roommates, in a slasher segment which provides a welcome rush to the movie pace. The bitch of the lot has the best death scene, Torn Curtain-style, before it is time for Sarah to lay down and die.In a finale which does not make any dreadful mistake (ultimate jump scare, loose ends, call for a sequel, to name but a few), Sarah is born again as Annie Lennox, complete with Savage wig and make-up moves from the Why video. Part character study, part body horror, part slasher, part satanism, Starry Eyes does not really coalesces into a coherent whole. The idea that to become part of the Hollywood elite you have to suck dick, lose your teeth and vomit maggots seems eerily adequate, though.