Starfish (2018 film)

Starfish is a 2018 science fiction horror film directed by A.T. White and starring Virginia Gardner. It was an official selection of Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.

Inspiration
White saw a screening of Monsters at FrightFest and met director Gareth Edwards, who encouraged him to make a short film on a digital camera (for which he is thanked in the credits of Starfish). The screenplay was written in reaction to White going through a divorce and his best friend dying of cancer.

Plot
Aubrey is a woman whose friend Grace has passed away. As she is grieving, she breaks into Grace's old home and squats there. She begins having strange dreams and awakes to find that her small town has been attacked by mysterious alien creatures. An unknown person contacts her via a walkie talkie and tells her that Grace discovered a signal that allowed the events to occur. Aubrey finds cassette tapes that include messages from Grace saying that she has hidden the rest of the tapes. Aubrey experiences more cryptic visions and goes to find the rest of the tapes.

Aubrey successfully finds the rest of the tapes, visiting places such as the grocery store, library, and cinema. She experiences visions and avoids aggressive aliens and mutated humans throughout her quest. Eventually, she takes all the tapes to a radio station at the top of a hill and plays them all simultaneously on the broadcast equipment with the aim of using the mixtape to close the dimensional gate. The voice on the walkie talkie tells her that she actually opened the doors even further, thus dooming the world. Aubrey goes outside the radio station, enters an antigravity field caused by the dimensional gate, and floats up into it.

Cast

 * Virginia Gardner as Aubrey
 * Christina Masterson as Grace

Reception
Starfish has an 89% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 63 reviews and a Metacritic score of 74 based on 6 reviews.