"Selling your soul" is a fairly clichéd trope, but where this film gets it right in the gory details of the contract. The solid performance of the lead carries the whole thing, as the supporting cast are entirely forgettable. The make-up is horrific and visceral as Sarah's transformation occurs, and all in all, it's a great starter movie on a smaller budget that delves into a very nasty idea.
Saying all that though, you can't help but think the writer(s) would have done well to indulge themselves in a good study of Faust or Paradise Lost to add sophistication to what is, in itself, a Satanic version of "The Fly". The curiosity is *why* fame is so important to the person that they would do anything, even if they are just shallow. The alluding to a sadistic side here and there is a nice touch, but no explanation is given to why Sarah is specifically chosen. Faust is bored, and espouses all the worst in scientific nature, claiming Mephistopheles as his servant to have all upside until the consequences come - the deal is more of a credit card loan deception that needs to be paid in blood, giving a degree of ambiguity that is fascinating; the intoxicating reward comes first, hiding the true cost.
Then there's the comparison to "Rosemary's Baby", which isn't equitable. Polanski's epic was profound because it was a normal couple in an everyday setting, where the evil was completely hidden inside the American dream: the horror was in the normality of the circumstances. "The Fly", in turn, was a tale of obsession, ethical violation, and man's madness with technology, which parallels the grotesque prosthetics. Each of them feature some form of nobility or higher idea (academic learning, scientific advancement, happy family life) corrupted by something inexplicably horrifying. All of the comparisons are, at best, superficial: Starry eyes sadly doesn't have that layered depth, and calls in a debt without spending the reward first: a deal with the devil is a deception/con that appears to have no downside; otherwise no-one would make one, even in desperation.
As a satire, it works when you consider the ugliness of what is happening on the outside reflects the shallowness of the inside - but for that, you need a glimpse into the external world of Hollywood and the person's relationships. A little more exposition on the cult itself, the ritual/mechanism taking place, and the end result would have been useful to understand the story, because as it stands, it's a character study with her scalp rotting away.
Why don't her friends notice and get her to a doctor? Where are her parents, and what is the cause of her emptiness? Is she dying like a vampire? Is she giving birth to something? How do the weird cloak people get around in LA without being spotted, doing weird auditions, or wearing pentagrams to photo-ops? Who are the cult members, and why do they choose her? Was it ultimately worth it or was the price unfair? Is it all a hallucination? The story elements don't join up and it's far too much of a stretch to try and put them together.
There's a great way to doing a story like this, but unfortunately only some of it's in there. A perverse take on her "ascent by descent" would be a great theme, and the Polanski "normality" take typically scores - complete with the inescapable debt being called in later a la Faust, combined with a more subtle "rebirth" procedure (that maybe gets Fly-like later). The attention-grabbing grotesque just feels like too blunt an object for such a powerful subject.
The true horror is in the demonic deadness of her face - who can imagine the horror of giving up their beauty, humanity, or very soul to become as damned as the Devil himself? A walking dead haunted body carrying the demonic - no laughter, no love? Would you give up your capacity for joy, compassion, feeling, love, - but why? Imagine attaching/bonding deeply with the character on screen, only to be powerless to lose her to her spiritual death. That's the most painful human button you could press in a film like this, and it feels like the filmmakers brushed their fingers over it - but decided not to push it.
Saying all that though, you can't help but think the writer(s) would have done well to indulge themselves in a good study of Faust or Paradise Lost to add sophistication to what is, in itself, a Satanic version of "The Fly". The curiosity is *why* fame is so important to the person that they would do anything, even if they are just shallow. The alluding to a sadistic side here and there is a nice touch, but no explanation is given to why Sarah is specifically chosen. Faust is bored, and espouses all the worst in scientific nature, claiming Mephistopheles as his servant to have all upside until the consequences come - the deal is more of a credit card loan deception that needs to be paid in blood, giving a degree of ambiguity that is fascinating; the intoxicating reward comes first, hiding the true cost.
Then there's the comparison to "Rosemary's Baby", which isn't equitable. Polanski's epic was profound because it was a normal couple in an everyday setting, where the evil was completely hidden inside the American dream: the horror was in the normality of the circumstances. "The Fly", in turn, was a tale of obsession, ethical violation, and man's madness with technology, which parallels the grotesque prosthetics. Each of them feature some form of nobility or higher idea (academic learning, scientific advancement, happy family life) corrupted by something inexplicably horrifying. All of the comparisons are, at best, superficial: Starry eyes sadly doesn't have that layered depth, and calls in a debt without spending the reward first: a deal with the devil is a deception/con that appears to have no downside; otherwise no-one would make one, even in desperation.
As a satire, it works when you consider the ugliness of what is happening on the outside reflects the shallowness of the inside - but for that, you need a glimpse into the external world of Hollywood and the person's relationships. A little more exposition on the cult itself, the ritual/mechanism taking place, and the end result would have been useful to understand the story, because as it stands, it's a character study with her scalp rotting away.
Why don't her friends notice and get her to a doctor? Where are her parents, and what is the cause of her emptiness? Is she dying like a vampire? Is she giving birth to something? How do the weird cloak people get around in LA without being spotted, doing weird auditions, or wearing pentagrams to photo-ops? Who are the cult members, and why do they choose her? Was it ultimately worth it or was the price unfair? Is it all a hallucination? The story elements don't join up and it's far too much of a stretch to try and put them together.
There's a great way to doing a story like this, but unfortunately only some of it's in there. A perverse take on her "ascent by descent" would be a great theme, and the Polanski "normality" take typically scores - complete with the inescapable debt being called in later a la Faust, combined with a more subtle "rebirth" procedure (that maybe gets Fly-like later). The attention-grabbing grotesque just feels like too blunt an object for such a powerful subject.
The true horror is in the demonic deadness of her face - who can imagine the horror of giving up their beauty, humanity, or very soul to become as damned as the Devil himself? A walking dead haunted body carrying the demonic - no laughter, no love? Would you give up your capacity for joy, compassion, feeling, love, - but why? Imagine attaching/bonding deeply with the character on screen, only to be powerless to lose her to her spiritual death. That's the most painful human button you could press in a film like this, and it feels like the filmmakers brushed their fingers over it - but decided not to push it.