Starfish is a 2019 sci-fi drama about a girl grieving for the loss of her best friend that just happens to take place on a day like no other.
We are a precarious lot, the human species here adrift on a precarious rock in a precarious space. As fragile as we are, we are also astonishingly durable, tested through time to endure the most challenging of fates, yet our end as a thing in this cosmic pool of uncertainty is out there somewhere, looming with a formidable doom. A few movies have taken to this inevitably with a characteristic offbeat tone, from Lorene Scafaria‘s Seeking a Friend for the End of the World to Lars von Trier‘s Melancholia, our end giving those in the story time to reflect. So it is with writer/director A.T. White‘s full length feature debut Starfish, a deeply resonating meditation on life itself, being an often mesmerizing, frustrating, challenging experience that will be unlike anything you’ve seen this year.
After the death of her best friend Grace (Christina Masterson), Aubrey Parker (Virginia Garner) slips into isolation, breaking into Grace’s apartment and nestling into a space she thinks she knows well while discovering maybe not so much. She feeds Grace’s pets, a jellyfish and a turtle, looks through a small telescope at the neighbors across the street having sex, she steadily slipping into a recessive state, soon falling into a deep sleep on the sofa. The next morning, after an odd dream, she wakes to find there is no power, the streets nearly empty of people and life, and a horde of savage creatures hunting human flesh.
It’s right here where you think you know exactly where Starfish is heading, that of another monster in the dark horror film with people chased by mostly unseen beasts, and to a point, that is what it is before pivoting to something else entirely. Escaping an attack, Aubrey is contacted over a two-way radio and instructed to close her eyes and point the speaker at the monster banging on the door of the diner where she is hiding, which soon drives it away. The man on the other end knows who Aubrey is, calling her by name, telling her to go back to Grace’s apartment where she’s told Grace has already uncovered clues to what is happening and how Aubrey is key to connecting it all.
I’m sort of hesitant in revealing much more, the movie itself a series of mysteries that are slow to come together with the real story of Grace found on a collection of audio cassette tapes (the movie appears to take place some time in the 1980s) that give Aubrey a unique ability to travel in her mind to places that seem very real. I’ll leave that there and let it imply what potential lies beyond, making it clear that Starfish veers far away from the expectations the monsters seems initially primed to create.
Without a doubt, it is White’s profound patience in delivering a deeply speculative and almost delicate visual experience that keeps his film so abundantly watchable. A flutter of a lace curtain, the descent of a pair of small starfish into a tank with a waiting jellyfish, the lap of a wave coming to shore under the sofa in living room … these are small but significant moments of many that detail the intricacies of a unique experience that surely will test many hoping for a more visceral action-orientation movie. However, as part of the troubling mental descent of grief and contemplation Aubrey undergoes makes its often disoriented presentation all the more impactful. There is a scene with an alien near the start of the third act that is handled with grace and wonder that reminded me a bit of Gareth Edwards‘ Monsters. It certainly makes you think. How often does that happen while watching a movie?
While there is much layered in the exploration and the film’s mix of caustic suspense and trippy ambiguity, kudos go to White’s experimentation as he sort of tosses all but the kitchen sink into the telling, including a bit of Japanese-esque animation, leaving this feeling like a movie with no stone unturned, even as it gets meta with itself in a surprisingly eerie and clever way. It’ll surely divide its audience, but I found its excesses especially absorbing. Highly recommended.