Essay: tragedy and triumph of pop stardom in ‘Bloodthirsty’

This editorial contains spoilers for Bloodthirsty.

“There’s just so much pressure as a female in the industry to look a certain way and to dress a certain way,” says Demi Lovato, nearly in tears, in her new documentary. Dancing with the Devil peels back the layers of the popstar’s life with graphic detail about her addiction, 2018 overdose, and sexual trauma — symptomatic of the music industry’s slimy underbelly, particularly as it relates to the treatment of women. In 2021, Lovato’s documentary is one of many deeply-probing reassessments, alongside actor Mara Wilson’s troubling essay and The New York Times doc-style episode “Framing Britney Spears” (despite its sensationalism and Spears not being actively involved). A post-Me Too reckoning, further exposing the hellishness of an industry long-poisoned with toxic masculinity and warped power dynamics, seeks to repay countless pounds of flesh.

It seems fitting then that Bloodythirsty, directed by Amelia Moses with a script from Wendy Hill-Tout, be released amidst such an iron-hot cultural moment. You see, pop star Grey’s (Lauren Beatty) biggest fear is her second album flopping. The sophomore slump is a very well-documented myth (there has been plenty of evidence to both support the trend and disprove it). So, the indie-pop artist turns to Vaughn Daniels (Greg Bryk), a prolific producer who had his own artistic hey-day in the ’90s during the boy band craze. Now, Daniels lives mostly as a recluse, you could say, squirreling away his days and nights in his lavish estate and state-of-the-art home studio. He has his own demons, of course, and how could he not within such a parasitic business.

When we first meet Grey, she’s already experiencing a beastly transformation with teeth popping from her gums and blood pouring out her mouth. In her fear, she’s turned to a psychiatrist who prescribes her a drug to squelch not only her physical mutation but severe visual and auditory hallucinations. During a glossy photo shoot, she appears to barely keep her life together — and underneath a creature writhes around in her very bones. It’s like if Miley Cyrus, another young woman who’s been put through the cultural wringer, was a lycanthrope in that “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” episode of Black Mirror. Clear lines can be drawn from the film’s fantastic metaphors to what we’ve seen play out in the tabloids, especially over the last 20 years with the rise of the paparazzi. Compounded with the social media age, we all are voyeuristic vultures feeding off the carcasses of pop stars and celebrities. We consume. We bleed them dry. And boil vengeful when we don’t get what we want.

Grey and her girlfriend Charlie (Katharine King So) arrive at the mansion to Vaughn’s cooly mysterious demeanor. He’s the tall, dashing type and takes quick interest in Grey that leaps far beyond simply helping her develop her songwriting. You see, he’s a lycanthrope, too, perhaps a metamorphosis directly attributed to the industry — or maybe it stems from a more basic, natural origin. Grey and Vaughn spend countless hours writing and recording in the studio. Initially, Grey keeps hitting bricks walls, paralleling her struggle to suppress whatever savage creature lies just behind her eyes. A vegan since she was six years old, when she realized where food came from, she begins to question her life choices, as a thirst for blood also growls and grows from deep within. Vaughn insidiously taunts her to try a bit of steak at dinner and later provokes her to crush a baby mouse in her hands; it’s all stepping stones to get her to accept who and what she is. But it’s her craving for fame and success that does the trick. Once she drinks a plate of run-off blood from a slice of steak, something clicks inside of her. Her songwriting flourishes in a way she never could have imagined.

“I get the creeps from everyone’s eyes on me, blood thirsty / Sippin’ on us, sip-sippin’ on us likе flavor of the week,” she sings with a throaty snarl over slithering electric guitar. “Bloodthirsty” strikes from her core in a way that indicates such artistic excellence is a reward for feeding her animalistic form. “I get the creeps, and Evеryone wants a piece, blood thirsty,” she continues with a tortured vocal. “Sharpen your tongues / Sink in your teeth.”

Her vocals have preternaturally matured, as well. Days prior, Grey struggled to land even the most basic notes and key changes. Yet now, someone else’s blood coursing with her own, she excavates richer meaning in the words she sings, as she turns her pain and trauma of growing up in the foster system into great art. With another song “Greta’s Song,” which moves Charlie to tears, she completely emerges as the artist she’d always wanted to become.

But Grey pays the price. She pays with the love of Charlie, the fixation of Vaughn, and even her own identity. As an openly queer woman, she must work twice as hard as her heterosexual peers and sacrifice everything she was and is to a dripping, fang-toothed brute of an industry that cares little about her well-being. In the end, Grey leans into the masochism. You see, the allure of fame is far too intoxicating to ignore. When the film comes to a close, she takes to the stage, spotlight focused on her, and performs her heart out at the piano. The arena rumbles with cheers and applause, further fostering her cravings. A scruffy wheeze escape her lungs, and she looks to the camera, a penetrating gaze so chilling it’s clear she has become barbaric like everyone else in the industry. It is both poetic and tragic — and perchance she finds agency within such a fucked system. If you want to survive, and even knowing you’ll lose, sometimes you just have to play the futile game.

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