Starry Eyes

A more literal and drastic version of Black Swan. It balances on the border of a serious parable and a B-movie caricature, and both approaches clash a lot against each other. I’m not ecstatic, but it does have a couple of effective scenes. (14.11.2014)

Aptly set among the acting scene in Los Angeles, Starry Eyes is a horror allegory about the foulness of excessive ambition that overcomes people and makes them lose their friends and even themselves. “Climbing over people” becomes “climbing over corpses” here, because after the interesting, mysterious and psychological first half, the film becomes a bloodbath. Which doesn’t do it much good. Afterwards, it just tries to save itself with a wannabe artsy, but nevertheless original ending. (14.01.2016)

This thing is completely oozing with "Aronofsky" (which needn't necessarily be a bad thing), unfortunately I couldn't help internally rating it "WTF" at some points and I really don't mean that as a positive. It's certainly thought-provoking as an allegory for a life full of personal ambition and desperation to succeed in the big movie world. The transformation of the main character is interesting on the whole, but only to the point where the plot starts to veer towards the overly spiritual. I understand that the sectarian theme is actually secondary here and only serves as a means to satisfy its own ambitions, yet I couldn't help feeling that it was actually overblown in some places. And the soundtrack, which in the vast majority of cases would be more suited to a giallo film, didn't add much to it either. But the van gore scene was worth it. (26.01.2020)