The Neon Demon – Film Review

Jesse (Elle Fanning) moves to Los Angeles just after her 16th birthday to launch a career as a model. The head of her agency tells the innocent teen that she has the qualities to become a top star. Jesse soon faces the wrath of ruthless vixens who despise her fresh-faced beauty. On top of that, she must contend with a seedy motel manager and a creepy photographer. As Jesse starts to take the fashion world by storm, her personality changes in ways that could help her against her cutthroat rivals.

If you were to call Nicolas Winding Refn a pretentious hack who always uses style over substance, I can understand where you’re coming from. I wouldn’t agree with you, but that’s not to say I won’t hear out your arguments. Refn is a director who, no matter what he makes, is controversial.

The day he puts out a generic, straight-forward film is the day that Hell freezes over, and they rarely get as weird, stylish, insanely trippy, colorful, and confusing as The Neon Demon. This is a psychological horror-thriller with huge bite, and thankfully, it does not bite off more than it can chew.

There’s a certain quality of unease that this film carries with it throughout its running time that you cannot put your finger on. During the course of the film, you’ll constantly find yourself feeling deeply uncomfortable, but not really able to explain why. All of Refn’s films make you feel this way, and it’s both terrifying and fascinating.

A large part of why this film works as well as it does is because of the absolutely gorgeous cinematography by Natasha Braier. Every single frame is something that you could quite literally put on display. That accompanied with the genuinely staggering neon-soaked color palette, musical score by Cliff Martinez, and the bold direction from Refn make this a visual masterpiece.

It also features a fantastic lead performance from Elle Fanning who has never been more intriguing. Here, she portrays Jesse, a woman who seems relatively shy on the surface, but you can’t help but get a bad feeling from. Who is this girl and what does she want? Is there more than meets the eye? Refn definitely has answers, but he won’t be spoon-feeding them to you.

That’s probably one of the biggest reasons why Refn’s films always get trashed by so many people – they are too confusing for plenty of folks and they’re also insanely mysterious. Each one of his movies presents the audience with some strange mysteries to solve and it’s all up to us, the viewer, to do so. No help provided.

But that’s why I’ll always champion him as a filmmaker. Even if he makes a film that I don’t like down the road, I’ll at least have to give him points for being original, bold, and daring because it’s in his DNA at this point. Love it or hate it, The Neon Demon is extremely bold.

The Neon Demon is a neon-drenched exercise in unease, directed excellently by Nicolas Winding Refn and featuring a stellar lead performance from Elle Fanning.