Starfish

Synopsis (From Letterboxd):

A GIRL. A MIXTAPE. AND THE END OF THE WORLD.

 

A unique, intimate and honest portrayal of a girl grieving for the loss of her best friend. That just happens to take place on the day the world ends as we know it.

 

Starfish begins as an interesting and intriguing look at grief but turns into something far more Sci-Fi, which in this context is quite a strange transition. Whilst I was engrossed with the performance and behaviour of Aubrey (Virginia Gardner) whilst she was struggling to come to terms with the loss of her best friend Grace (Christina Masterson), this is ultimately overshadowed by the twist in the narrative, and it feels somewhat less powerful once it fully embraces this new direction.

With a nod to the look and feel of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s excellent film The Endless, but with more isolation and less community involved, there is much to like about Starfish. There are some really well done moments throughout this film, including a slip into an animated scene that was both poignant and impressive. There is a small amount of CGI that looks pretty good and works well but for the most part Starfish centres solely around our heroine, Aubrey, and how she deals with the loss of her best friend and a growing threat alongside her dawning realisation that she has a mission to complete. However, the end product is a film that gives you glimpses of really impressive work interspersed with some less ideal elements.

Written, directed and scored by AT White (Al White) in his debut feature film there is a lot to be complimentary about and alongside Alberto Bañares’ clean and stylish cinematography, which works really well in this setting and managing to capture both the confined apartment space and the wider, snow-covered townscape in impressive style. The shot choices and camerawork were a real highlight for me particularly early on and also the performance of Virginia Gardner who manages to pretty much carry this whole film by herself. Starfish won’t be to everyone’s liking with its deliberately slow pacing and a seeming lack of answers, but they do both work for this film and the style that it is trying to get across.

There is a moment where the film has the chance to follow a path, when it chooses to expand the scope of the film into animation in collaboration with a mixtape track that Aubrey finds and plays, but this isn’t followed up on in a satisfying way.  With the potential of the other mixtapes that are there to be utilised it unfortunately leaves one of the few standout moments of the film feeling like a missed opportunity in doing something quite special and instead falls a little bit flat towards the end.

The progress from short-films to this feature has been ably completed, with assured skill and ability Starfish looks great and, with a bit more polish/defined direction to the narrative it would definitely give a greater viewing experience. I’m not sure that it fully knows what it wants to be (categorised as Drama/Sci-Fi/horror on IMDB) and the playing down of the original grief angle as the film progresses lessens the film that Starfish could have been, in my opinion, and the choices it makes leave a few too many questions open.