StarfishWhat kind of quest would you undertake to come to terms with grief? Starfish (2018) is a surreal psychological horror movie about a young woman named Aubrey Parker (Virginia Gardner), who struggles to cope after the passing of her close friend, Grace (Christina Masterson). After her funeral on a snowless New Year's Eve, Aubrey breaks into Grace's apartment--situated above a tavern--and falls into a deep slumber that night while listening to music. When she awakens the next morning (and next year), the rural town is covered in snow and has been deserted, while a menacing monster stalks the frigid streets.
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Written and directed by A.T. White, Starfish explores grief through metaphor, namely in how Aubrey experiences her world while going through it. It is said that there are "five stages of grief": denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance; Aubrey's quest has her transitioning through all of these in some way. The depth of Aubrey's relationship with Grace was clearly potent enough that her absence leaves a palpable void within the protagonist's heart. Their past together is intimated through subtle details; they worked together at their local radio station, they both liked to dye their hair, and they shared a bed. Aubrey even tends to Grace's collection of exotic pets after she is gone, including a pocket-sized pet turtle and a few jellyfish who she feeds some starfish. While going through Grace's possessions, Aubrey finds a cassette tape addressed to her, ominously labelled "This Mixtape Will Save the World". Aubrey listens to the tape and hears Grace's voice speaking posthumous words of wisdom and kindness to her, while inviting her to find a series of other tapes like it hidden among "the places they used to go". Aubrey almost forgets about this missive to discover Grace's final secrets after bearing witness to the mysterious apocalypse all around her. Similar to films like The Quiet Earth or I Am Legend, Aubrey is confronted by the possibility that she is the last person left on Earth; her anxiety is mixed with terror when a fanged monster--often glimpsed only for brief flashes--chases her back to the tavern and begins beating down the door. Aubrey hears a voice call her name from a walkie-talkie that used to belong to Grace, which tells her how to deflect the monster's advances, then tries to convince her to help him turn around the strange business affecting the town. Yet between her unresolved grief, horror, and perhaps even guilt, Aubrey chooses to go her own way by accepting the emotionally purging scavenger hunt Grace has mapped out for her instead.
As Starfish progresses, the fabric of reality becomes ever more threadbare, speaking to both Aubrey's disintegrating cognitive stability and the potential incursion of beings from beyond our realm of existence, given access to our dimension through sound waves. Starfish alludes to inscrutable monsters that assail our sanity in a way that recalls the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. As much as the creature that hounds Aubrey could be a metaphor for her own grief, it is equally plausible that its influence--or the influence of other extradimensional horrors--is what changes her perception of reality. Starfish is set in an unspecified time and place, although the predominance of more antiquated technology--like handheld cassette decks or cathode ray television sets--suggests it is set in the past. Despite this, Aubrey's manner of speech and behavior feels contemporary, giving the setting an anachronistic feel, while making her appear out of synch with her world. The way that depression gives way to madness is reminiscent of psychological thrillers like Roman Polanski's Repulsion, like how Aubrey insulates herself almost entirely from the outside world, while Grace's apartment more and more squalid; garbage even gets stuffed into the toaster oven. The plot of Starfish follows this theme of entropy, and becomes increasingly disjointed and deliberately oblique. Aubrey experiences bizarre and strange phenomena as scenes transition, often via Grace's assorted mixtapes scattered around town. Some of these events--including one where the film briefly becomes animated--could be explained away as a dream; yet they are rarely heralded by any suggestion of this in advance. It would be simple to say that Aubrey is gradually losing her mind, but she doesn't come across as crazy. Her grief over the loss of Grace is understandable, raising the question as to whether there is some external force assailing her or even the world at large.
Feelings of loneliness permeate Starfish; there is only one face-to-face conversation Aubrey has with a person, and it is as she is "escaping" from Grace's funeral. Aubrey is wrapped up in a constant solipsistic retreat from the world--so when everyone vanishes, it isn't all that big of an emotional change. She shuffles through the barren streets of her town with the fur of an overly large wolf to keep her warm, seeking clues to give meaning to her quest. Each piece of the puzzle only draws her further inward, and each cassette tape is accompanied by a set piece featuring the kind of lo-fi indie rock Aubrey and Grace would have broadcast during their radio days. In one such instance, Aubrey listens to a tape she discovers at the library, pulling the hood of her sweater over her headphones, and enters an Inception-esque nesting doll equivalent of dream states and trances. (One of these suggests that she has emerged from the movie itself and sees the actress Virginia Gardner preparing for her role.) Aubrey's apocalypse has made the world around her strange and mysterious, turning her into an oddity in her own environment--a sensation that echoes the iconic surreal film, Eraserhead. Starfish explores the inner thoughts of its protagonist through Aubrey's dreams, waking or otherwise. In these cinematic asides, the slightest of details allude to a deeper pain that affects Aubrey, inviting the audience to connect these dots about her past and motivations. One reoccurring image is of a young woman undressing on the beach, illuminated by the glow of a car's headlights. It is not immediately evident who the woman is, but later scenes suggest it is Aubrey. Was this woman always Aubrey, or did she superimpose herself into this moment to justify some other trauma, perhaps something that happened to Grace? In a couple of other scenes, a man whose face has been horrifyingly ripped away turns toward Aubrey with his gory visage. In the scene on the beach, a man is curled up in front of the car, cradling his knees in a pose recalling this ghastly figure. Is this the same man? Did something happen to his face, or did Aubrey only dream it to be so? Starfish opens with a statement that the film is "based on a true story", yet were Aubrey's perception of these events authentic, it could not plausibly be so. Does this mean--similar to Fargo before it--that this is merely a stylistic convention, designed to encourage the audience to interpret the plot from a different perspective? Or does it suggest that when someone is in the throes of mental anguish, that their perception of reality--no matter how distorted--becomes true for them? In this way, Starfish posits that truth and reality are not the immutable truths we hold them to be, and that our grasp on what is or isn't real is subjective.
Recommended for: Fans of an enigmatic film that stirs together genres like science fiction, horror, and drama into a swirl of ambiguity, while commenting on the psychological effects of grief. Audiences that appreciate a story open to individual interpretation--the kind that should encourage discussion and debate--will glean the most from Starfish.
As Starfish progresses, the fabric of reality becomes ever more threadbare, speaking to both Aubrey's disintegrating cognitive stability and the potential incursion of beings from beyond our realm of existence, given access to our dimension through sound waves. Starfish alludes to inscrutable monsters that assail our sanity in a way that recalls the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. As much as the creature that hounds Aubrey could be a metaphor for her own grief, it is equally plausible that its influence--or the influence of other extradimensional horrors--is what changes her perception of reality. Starfish is set in an unspecified time and place, although the predominance of more antiquated technology--like handheld cassette decks or cathode ray television sets--suggests it is set in the past. Despite this, Aubrey's manner of speech and behavior feels contemporary, giving the setting an anachronistic feel, while making her appear out of synch with her world. The way that depression gives way to madness is reminiscent of psychological thrillers like Roman Polanski's Repulsion, like how Aubrey insulates herself almost entirely from the outside world, while Grace's apartment more and more squalid; garbage even gets stuffed into the toaster oven. The plot of Starfish follows this theme of entropy, and becomes increasingly disjointed and deliberately oblique. Aubrey experiences bizarre and strange phenomena as scenes transition, often via Grace's assorted mixtapes scattered around town. Some of these events--including one where the film briefly becomes animated--could be explained away as a dream; yet they are rarely heralded by any suggestion of this in advance. It would be simple to say that Aubrey is gradually losing her mind, but she doesn't come across as crazy. Her grief over the loss of Grace is understandable, raising the question as to whether there is some external force assailing her or even the world at large.
Feelings of loneliness permeate Starfish; there is only one face-to-face conversation Aubrey has with a person, and it is as she is "escaping" from Grace's funeral. Aubrey is wrapped up in a constant solipsistic retreat from the world--so when everyone vanishes, it isn't all that big of an emotional change. She shuffles through the barren streets of her town with the fur of an overly large wolf to keep her warm, seeking clues to give meaning to her quest. Each piece of the puzzle only draws her further inward, and each cassette tape is accompanied by a set piece featuring the kind of lo-fi indie rock Aubrey and Grace would have broadcast during their radio days. In one such instance, Aubrey listens to a tape she discovers at the library, pulling the hood of her sweater over her headphones, and enters an Inception-esque nesting doll equivalent of dream states and trances. (One of these suggests that she has emerged from the movie itself and sees the actress Virginia Gardner preparing for her role.) Aubrey's apocalypse has made the world around her strange and mysterious, turning her into an oddity in her own environment--a sensation that echoes the iconic surreal film, Eraserhead. Starfish explores the inner thoughts of its protagonist through Aubrey's dreams, waking or otherwise. In these cinematic asides, the slightest of details allude to a deeper pain that affects Aubrey, inviting the audience to connect these dots about her past and motivations. One reoccurring image is of a young woman undressing on the beach, illuminated by the glow of a car's headlights. It is not immediately evident who the woman is, but later scenes suggest it is Aubrey. Was this woman always Aubrey, or did she superimpose herself into this moment to justify some other trauma, perhaps something that happened to Grace? In a couple of other scenes, a man whose face has been horrifyingly ripped away turns toward Aubrey with his gory visage. In the scene on the beach, a man is curled up in front of the car, cradling his knees in a pose recalling this ghastly figure. Is this the same man? Did something happen to his face, or did Aubrey only dream it to be so? Starfish opens with a statement that the film is "based on a true story", yet were Aubrey's perception of these events authentic, it could not plausibly be so. Does this mean--similar to Fargo before it--that this is merely a stylistic convention, designed to encourage the audience to interpret the plot from a different perspective? Or does it suggest that when someone is in the throes of mental anguish, that their perception of reality--no matter how distorted--becomes true for them? In this way, Starfish posits that truth and reality are not the immutable truths we hold them to be, and that our grasp on what is or isn't real is subjective.
Recommended for: Fans of an enigmatic film that stirs together genres like science fiction, horror, and drama into a swirl of ambiguity, while commenting on the psychological effects of grief. Audiences that appreciate a story open to individual interpretation--the kind that should encourage discussion and debate--will glean the most from Starfish.