Revis­it­ing Star­ry Eyes in the wake of Hollywood’s sex­u­al abuse scandal

Recent­ly a friend rec­om­mend­ed I watch Star­ry Eyes, a film orig­i­nal­ly released in late 2014. I was warned that the nature of it was extreme and that the sub­ject mat­ter was heavy. Intrigued, espe­cial­ly by my friend’s lack of expla­na­tion, I decid­ed to give it go. The plot is straight­for­ward enough for the first 20 min­utes or so – we meet Sarah (Alex Essoe), a bud­ding young actress liv­ing in Hol­ly­wood. She works as a wait­ress and has anx­i­ety over going to audi­tions. It quick­ly becomes clear that she does not have a lot of self-con­fi­dence or self-worth. She checks her appear­ance in her bed­room mir­ror with a look of wor­ry and disaffection.

Then one day, she goes to audi­tion at a pres­ti­gious film com­pa­ny. It doesn’t go well and she breaks down in a bath­room stall after­wards, tear­ing her hair out and scream­ing – not know­ing that the cast­ing direc­tors can hear her. They ask her to come back and ​“per­form” it for them, to put her­self through the same phys­i­cal and men­tal pain all over again. At first she says no, but when they threat­en to dis­miss her as a can­di­date for the role entire­ly, she reluc­tant­ly agrees. She leaves the build­ing in a daze, shocked by what just hap­pened. This is not the only time she is forced into an extreme­ly uncom­fort­able sit­u­a­tion by peo­ple with­in the industry.

The sec­ond time it hap­pens is dur­ing a pho­to­shoot. After tak­ing a few pic­tures, the pho­tog­ra­phers and the cast­ing direc­tor ask Sarah to undress. We do not see their faces this time. When she inter­jects, ask­ing if it is nec­es­sary for the role, she is rebuffed and again the unspo­ken threat of not get­ting the job hangs in the air, leav­ing Sarah with not much of a choice as she is once again exploited.

As the film goes on, the abuse that Sarah is exposed to gets more and more vicious. When she is called in for a meet­ing with the pro­duc­er for the film she audi­tioned for, he promis­es her that she will become a big star – while touch­ing her in a high­ly inap­pro­pri­ate man­ner. Hor­ri­fied, Sarah runs out of the meet­ing in tears. Sarah’s friends are not there to sup­port her or help her come to terms with what she has been through, even though they know about it. They do not com­ment on the grue­some trans­for­ma­tion that stems from her trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ences –basi­cal­ly turn­ing a blind eye to her men­tal and phys­i­cal pain – her pro­gres­sive­ly mon­strous appear­ance a reflec­tion of this.

What’s inter­est­ing about the way Star­ry Eyes was received upon its ini­tial release is how a num­ber of crit­ics saw Sarah as being in some way respon­si­ble for what hap­pens to her. Many review­ers accused the film of rein­forc­ing a stereo­typ­i­cal view of Hol­ly­wood. Very few con­sid­ered the wider impli­ca­tions of Sarah’s sto­ry, and the abuse that she suf­fers is mere­ly shrugged off as an extreme aspect of the film, some­thing that does not actu­al­ly hap­pen in real life.

But it does, and it has, sev­er­al times over, as the recent #MeToo cam­paign con­tin­ues to remind us. Star­ry Eyes may seem like typ­i­cal hor­ror movie fare on the sur­face, but the events it por­trays should not be tak­en light­ly – espe­cial­ly in the wake of Hollywood’s ongo­ing sex­u­al abuse scan­dal. In an inter­view with Nerdist, direc­tors Kevin Kolsch and Den­nis Wid­my­er stat­ed that the film was about ​“the pres­sure that female actors face all the time”, although to what extent they intend­ed to raise aware­ness of this issue remains unclear.

That did not stop one crit­ic at rogere​bert​.com from describ­ing it as ​”cor­ro­sive­ly cyn­i­cal”, while Vari­ety dis­mis­sive­ly described it as ​“a dif­fi­cult the­atri­cal propo­si­tion”. While Star­ry Eyes is not the first hor­ror film to tack­le the issue of phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al abuse against women, it is arguably the first to expose the insti­tu­tion­al abuse which has been a dark secret in Hol­ly­wood for many years.