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Review: Beautiful Cosmic Horror ‘Starfish’ Explores Grief and Alternate Dimensions
When a mysterious signal from an unknown dimension summons the end of days, it appears as if only Aubrey (Virginia Gardner) is left on earth. Trapped in the apartment of her recently deceased best friend, the only clue she has is a single cassette left behind after her friend’s death, labeled “THIS MIXTAPE WILL SAVE THE WORLD”.
Thrust into a mystery orchestrated by her friend and stricken with grief, Aubrey begins to piece the clues together, uncovering a series of tapes all with pieces of the mystery signal. Along the way, progress is impeded when monstrous creatures begin to overrun the world and enclose in on her. Aubrey is forced to fight off the encroaching creatures and move beyond her own crippling grief in order to find the remaining tapes. But will completing the signal save the world?
The synopsis for Starfish cannot adequately convey the rich and heartfelt world that the film creates. With incredible effects by Marc Hutchings (Guardians of the Galaxy) and Spill Studios, and featuring an animated sequence by Tezuka Productions (Astro Boy), it’s a deeply moving and brilliantly creative cosmic horror that will leave you speechless.
Starfish is beautifully shot with a firm but gentle focus on actress Virginia Gardner, whose performance earns the camera’s attention. There’s a graceful stillness about her that is compelling to watch.
At its root, Starfish is about guilt, grief and loss. The score – composed by writer/director A.T. White – has a lush simplicity that plucks at your heartstrings and reverberates these emotional themes.
Just as vital for a film about a series of mixtapes is the soundtrack, which was compiled by White before he wrote the script. A playlist was created for the lead character (based on the songs she would be listening to) and played during the writing process, so that the music became integral to the action. The result is a gorgeous marriage of sight and sound.
Gardner carries herself with a weary weight that effectively communicates the grief and guilt she quietly holds on to. Intrusive thoughts plague Aubrey during quiet moments and chase her in her dreams.
Like the Lovecraftian monsters that haunt Aubrey, she can’t wait out her guilt and she can’t outrun it. It’s in these moments that Starfish hits the hardest — these flinches of painful memories that knock her off track. We see a young woman struggling with her loss while trying to mitigate the end of the world. Aubrey is tasked with closing her own emotional wounds and apocalyptic gateways to an alternate dimension.
Though we gain little information about Grace – Aubrey’s recently deceased best friend – her analog apartment is pumped full of personality, building her character through her personal space.
There’s a beauty and reverence to Starfish that reveals itself in these snapshots — a brief focus on details that paint a picture of the vibrant young woman that Grace was, shot with loving intimacy and scored with beautiful, melancholy music.
It’s an incredibly intimate and personal movie surrounding the loss of a dear friend, based on events in writer/director A.T. White’s own life. All proceeds that White makes from the film will be donated to cancer research.
Set against the backdrop of cosmic horror, Starfish is a beautiful film that explores the nature of loss. Driven by a captivating performance from Virginia Gardner and mixed with gorgeous cinematic visuals and a graceful score, it’s a stunning feature debut from A.T. White. We can’t wait to see what he does next.
Starfish will be released on VOD/digital on May 28th.
For more indie horror, check out the delightfully deranged trailer for Harpoon
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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments
It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.
We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.
“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”
That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”
Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:
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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening
Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.
Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.
Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.
Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.
Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.
The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.
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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date
Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.
Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.
These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:
According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”
Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.
Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.
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