Forget 'Obsession,' This Indie Horror Thriller Is the Perfect Replacement

Published Sep 30, 2026, 6:05 AM EDT

Mitchell Brown is a Wisconsin-based writer, film fanatic, and graduate of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who has written for various publications covering film analysis, reviews (both classic and contemporary), and movie news. He's also a screenwriter, having written multiple spec scripts. When he's not watching movies, writing movies, or writing about the films he's already seen...no, that about covers it.

Obsession is great, and everyone continues to love it—sans the weird section of the internet who decided they don't like Inde Navarrette because she was funny on Hot Ones Versus (the world is confusing). But beyond what happens on screen, part of the film's appeal (and the thing that people always bring up if you mention it in conversation) is how it was made independently, with a $750,000 budget. The horror genre is full of movies with behind-the-scenes micro-budget stories like Obsession, because it's one of the few genres where a movie can be independently made, without any big-name actors or studio backing, but word-of-mouth will get people to check it out. This was the case with another film that dabbled with themes of possession and people getting bludgeoned in the face with hard objects: Starry Eyes.

Co-directed by Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer, Starry Eyes follows Sarah (Alex Essoe), a waitress in Los Angeles who's also an aspiring actress, but can't seem to catch a break. Her only points of contact are her roommate, Tracy (Amanda Fuller), and Tracy's friends, who also want to make it big in Hollywood (or at least they're quick to talk about it). Sarah finally gets her chance to have a breakout role when she auditions for horror movie The Silver Scream, but over the course of the audition process, she slowly realizes that in order to get the part, she might have to sacrifice a part of herself to achieve her dreams.

Alex Essoe's Transformation (into a Scream Queen)

Image via Dark Sky Films

Released back in 2014, Starry Eyes was Alex Essoe's first starring role, and it would help lead her to immediate Scream Queen status, in addition to becoming a frequent collaborator with Mike Flanagan after her pitch-perfect casting as Wendy in Doctor Sleep. Similarly to Obsession, Starry Eyes plays up a tried and true premise—in Obsession's case, it's the Monkey's Paw, and in this case, it's the Faustian Bargain—but gives it a unique take. The film uses modern-day Hollywood as a framing device for occult horror, with the fictitious studio, Astraeus Pictures, using its studio image as a front for a cult to prey on impressionable young actresses. The film was released a few years before the MeToo Movement went viral, so the subject matter feels more ahead of the curve, rather than reactionary, and it leads to one of the film's more disturbing scenes, with Sarah being left alone with The Silver Scream's nameless producer (Louis Dezseran).

Starry Eyes had a paltry budget (even more so than Obsession), netting around $50,000 through KickStarter, but what money they had was on the screen when the gore and make-up effects become more prevalent in the third act — especially the work on Essoe when she begins to deteriorate mentally and physically. While lead casting is always important, this is a case where great lead casting elevates the entire film, in the same way Christian Bale's performance as Patrick Bateman made an already great movie like American Psycho into a great film. (It's so great, you can hear the italics in a person's voice just for emphasis.) Sarah's decline — from balancing work and acting classes while feeling bright-eyed and hopeful about achieving her dream, to forgoing her inhibitions and sanity under the guise that it'll help her future — makes her character more tragic. And by the time she gives in for the sake of winning the role, the movie hammers home her hopelessness about having no other options. For a movie that has a scene where our lead character pulls off her fingernails because they're already falling out, the actual toughest moments to watch are her forcing a smile while being stuck at a job she hates.

Alex Essoe Channels 'Possession'

The directors have cited Possession as an influence on the story, specifically Isabelle Adjani's performance, and that's very apparent when Sarah begins to spiral. Similarly to Adjani or Navarette, there are moments in Essoe's performance that, if handled in the wrong way, potentially run the risk of looking ridiculous. But the fearlessness of the actress and the strong direction give the character an added level of ferocity. The low budget also works in Starry Eyes' favor, because when Sarah is losing control, and she's out on the street or convulsing in her apartment, it looks like something out of Requiem for a Dream. It doesn't paint Hollywood in a romantic way, or present it as a place where dreams can come true. Everything's seedy and gross, almost all the exterior shots are overcast rather than sunny, and even the studio that Sarah does her audition in is cold and sterile-looking (possibly another nod to the visual aesthetic of Possession). It's like the movie posits the question of why someone would put themselves through this, and the cult (through the guise of a movie studio) feeds off that masochism to find those who would be the most vulnerable to manipulate.

Starry Eyes takes the classic occult horror sub-genre, in the same vein as Rosemary's Baby, and gives it the backdrop of the Hollywood studio system to tell a disturbing story with real-world parallels, while not being too on-the-nose or so specific that the message is overbearing. If you just want to watch it purely as a story about the dangers of ambition, and the horror of unwittingly being the pawn of a Satanic cult, it works perfectly as that too, and you can watch it for free right now on Tubi.