STARFISH tells the story of a young woman who arrives in town for her best friend's funeral, and who breaks into her friend's house shortly thereafter to grieve and ponder.
On that same day, apocalyptic events, ushered in by the appearance of murderous monsters, begin which portend the end of humanity. Her friend has left her an envelope containing a mixtape with instructions to find another six which, when put together, produce a signal which can still save the world. She then goes on a journey to find the mixtapes and play them in order to complete the signal.
Okay, so this sounds like the set-up for a slightly unusual sci-fi/mystery/horror movie, but it turns out this story is merely a metaphor for deep personal loss and guilt and treated like an afterthought.
What this movie is evidently really about is how a person uses music to guide her in the process of grieving the death of a dearly loved one, one where the grief is additionally topped with an overwhelming sense of guilt.
There is an audience for languidly paced emotion-driven movies where the logic of the mind defers to the logic of the heart, and I think that audience will really appreciate this movie.
The trouble is, that is not how this movie is marketed or comes across, and as a result many people who are not part of the target audience watch this movie and get disappointed. Indeed, the few monster/horror scenes add little to nothing to the movie and could have been left out. It amounts in my view to a bait and switch.
Technically, the movie is well-made, with nice visuals and plenty of music, courtesy of the writer/director. Sometimes it is bold in its approach in that it experiments with art-house techniques, such as an in-movie anime which culminates in the protagonist drowning, and another scene which breaks the fourth wall. But for an audience which is led to expect a movie that is supposed to make sense at the level at which it is ostensibly presented, it fails.
The very conceit of having someone who is already in possession of the mysterious signal to break it up, go out and hide its pieces around town for no given reason, on the off-chance that her friend might find them, sounds ridiculous on its face.
The best movies, considered as works of art, often feature multiple layers of interpretation. If this story was going to incorporate the apocalyptic monster scenario, then why not really go for it and make it one of the layers at which this movie functions, in addition to the deeply intimate, emotional one?
At the perfunctory level at which the sci-fi/horror story is told, this element tends to subtract from the story, in my view. If these monsters and the end of the world are supposed to be a metaphor for the protagonist's inner world, then presenting all that in such a literal manner, as this movie does, make her come off as self-centered and almost narcissistic.
On another note, I found the long stretches where nothing happens except that we see a gloomy, grieving woman, really irritating, and it instructive to compare this to another film I saw recently which received massive amounts of flak for being extremely slow-paced.
The horror movie HONEYDEW(2018) has practically nothing do with this film, except that it also features lengthy sequences where "nothing" happens. Yet to me, it was not only intellectually clear that these sequences served a purpose-they were meant to dial up the creep factor and unease-but they also achieved that emotionally. I am positive the movie would have felt less creepy and disturbing without those sequences. That is in part why I consider it a good movie, unlike apparently the majority of reviewers.
In contrast, while in STARFISH I can intellectually grasp that the lengthy sequences where "nothing" happens are meant to serve a purpose-to "feel" the character's pain and grief-they did absolutely nothing for me emotionally, except to bore me. I believe in part that is because the movie offers us too little on the relationship between the friends to care, and if this is right, then it represents a failure of the movie on its own terms.
STARFISH ends in a rather mystifying manner, not the least baffling aspect of which is that, apparently, "Forgive+Forget" completes the opening of the doors for the monsters to enter our world and consummate the apocalypse. But then, little else in this movie makes sense at a logical level.
Only watch this if you are part of the target audience.
On that same day, apocalyptic events, ushered in by the appearance of murderous monsters, begin which portend the end of humanity. Her friend has left her an envelope containing a mixtape with instructions to find another six which, when put together, produce a signal which can still save the world. She then goes on a journey to find the mixtapes and play them in order to complete the signal.
Okay, so this sounds like the set-up for a slightly unusual sci-fi/mystery/horror movie, but it turns out this story is merely a metaphor for deep personal loss and guilt and treated like an afterthought.
What this movie is evidently really about is how a person uses music to guide her in the process of grieving the death of a dearly loved one, one where the grief is additionally topped with an overwhelming sense of guilt.
There is an audience for languidly paced emotion-driven movies where the logic of the mind defers to the logic of the heart, and I think that audience will really appreciate this movie.
The trouble is, that is not how this movie is marketed or comes across, and as a result many people who are not part of the target audience watch this movie and get disappointed. Indeed, the few monster/horror scenes add little to nothing to the movie and could have been left out. It amounts in my view to a bait and switch.
Technically, the movie is well-made, with nice visuals and plenty of music, courtesy of the writer/director. Sometimes it is bold in its approach in that it experiments with art-house techniques, such as an in-movie anime which culminates in the protagonist drowning, and another scene which breaks the fourth wall. But for an audience which is led to expect a movie that is supposed to make sense at the level at which it is ostensibly presented, it fails.
The very conceit of having someone who is already in possession of the mysterious signal to break it up, go out and hide its pieces around town for no given reason, on the off-chance that her friend might find them, sounds ridiculous on its face.
The best movies, considered as works of art, often feature multiple layers of interpretation. If this story was going to incorporate the apocalyptic monster scenario, then why not really go for it and make it one of the layers at which this movie functions, in addition to the deeply intimate, emotional one?
At the perfunctory level at which the sci-fi/horror story is told, this element tends to subtract from the story, in my view. If these monsters and the end of the world are supposed to be a metaphor for the protagonist's inner world, then presenting all that in such a literal manner, as this movie does, make her come off as self-centered and almost narcissistic.
On another note, I found the long stretches where nothing happens except that we see a gloomy, grieving woman, really irritating, and it instructive to compare this to another film I saw recently which received massive amounts of flak for being extremely slow-paced.
The horror movie HONEYDEW(2018) has practically nothing do with this film, except that it also features lengthy sequences where "nothing" happens. Yet to me, it was not only intellectually clear that these sequences served a purpose-they were meant to dial up the creep factor and unease-but they also achieved that emotionally. I am positive the movie would have felt less creepy and disturbing without those sequences. That is in part why I consider it a good movie, unlike apparently the majority of reviewers.
In contrast, while in STARFISH I can intellectually grasp that the lengthy sequences where "nothing" happens are meant to serve a purpose-to "feel" the character's pain and grief-they did absolutely nothing for me emotionally, except to bore me. I believe in part that is because the movie offers us too little on the relationship between the friends to care, and if this is right, then it represents a failure of the movie on its own terms.
STARFISH ends in a rather mystifying manner, not the least baffling aspect of which is that, apparently, "Forgive+Forget" completes the opening of the doors for the monsters to enter our world and consummate the apocalypse. But then, little else in this movie makes sense at a logical level.
Only watch this if you are part of the target audience.