Starfish
Aubrey Parker has set herself alone in the world, surrounded by people who move around her but untouched by them save for her friend Grace, even at Grace’s funeral and the gathering after disengaged from the other mourners, Grace’s cousin approaching her to say she knows who she is, that Grace spoke of her all the time, enquiring if she received the letters sent to her about the project she had been working on before her death.
Waking from a nightmare in Grace’s home, Aubrey finds the world has changed, the power out, the streets deserted, empty cars abandoned and trails of blood in the snow, strange creatures prowling; taking shelter, a walkie talkie calls her name, the voice of another survivor telling her of the signal that Grace had been investigating, that it is now up to Aubrey to continue the work and perhaps save the world.
A meditation on the stages of grief, the mysteries of death and loneliness and questions of those left behind, written and directed by Al White Starfish has no answers, only futile pondering as Aubrey (Virginia Gardner) tiptoes through the shadows of a shattered world, seeking clues in the hidden mixtapes left behind by Grace (Christina Masterson) in the favourite places visited in their youth, empty places which should be occupied by conversation and laughter.
The voice telling her “you have to understand everything to accept it,” Starfish offers no clarity or closure or explanations, convincing neither as science fiction nor horror, Aubrey having apparently slept through the apocalypse and the mechanism by which portals have been opened or any other useful information withheld by the intermittently communicating taskmaster who never identifies their connection to either Aubrey or Grace and the creatures which have emerged a theoretical rather than actual threat.
The soul-searching echoing Another Earth and the minimalist setting occasionally interrupted by towering alien entities recalling Monsters, where that was built around a quest to get to safety across occupied and unsafe territory, where both those films moved forwards Starfish displays rotational symmetry, turning on the spot but presenting the same aspect from every angle, and while echinoderms can regrow lost limbs Aubrey cannot heal herself or the world.
Opening with the statement that it is based on a true story, it would be more honest to say that Starfish is inspired by an actual event, the film dedicated to a close friend of the director’s who died before the production began, but while this undoubtedly makes it a personal project it is not one which translates, an abstract and meandering mourning of what cannot be changed and the melancholy regrets of a less than perfect life, borrowing from music the emotion it struggles to convey itself and lacking the closure necessary to move on.
Starfish will be streaming on the Arrow platform from Friday 4th July
