Saw this at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival
"The Starling Girl" is a movie about 17-year-old Jem Starling struggles with her place within her Christian fundamentalist community. But everything changes when her magnetic youth pastor Owen returns to their church. It clears the director is trying her best to capture
the struggles and dark sides of the Christian fundamentalist community but the film doesn't really have a strong impact as it thinks it does due to the storyline being predictable and characters that weren't fully investable.
Throughout, the production and camerawork is pretty good as it helps to bring the settling of isolation and control throughout the main characters environment. The performance from Eliza Scanlen is pretty great and there are some narrative aspects that were pretty interesting. Unfortunately, the positive aspects were overshadowed with a story that has a very predictable setting and characters that aren't interesting to care for.
The characters felt wooden to the point it was difficult to really care much about them. The pacing struggles, some of the other performances were really bad and the dialogue moments felt like they were written from a poor student project at times.
There is a lot of potential that is missed and I really do feel like this movie would have been an pretty good and be considered a hidden gem. But it didn't work as well.
Rating: C.
