Review: The Neon Demon (2016)

mgid-ao-image-mtv

Beauty is dangerous, or so Nicholas Winding Refn would have us believe in the Drive director’s first horror film starring Maleficent’s Elle Fanning, Keanu Reeves, and Jena Malone.

maxresdefault

From the signature NWR graphic during the title credits, The Neon Demon seems designed to show you that Nicholas Winding Refn is an auteur with a unique voice. One that is presenting a unique vision and deconstruction of beauty and the fashion industry as well in his latest film. That the director of Drive, Valhalla Rising, and Only God Forgives is presenting a spectacle that is ultimately all flash and no substance is the real disappointing surprise of The Neon Demon.

The Neon Demon centers on Jesse (Elle Fanning) a 15 year old runaway who runs off to Los Angeles to find her place in the world of modeling. The film begins with an elaborate baroque set piece depicting Jesse with her throat slit but amazingly beautiful reclining on a couch as she is spied upon by a make-up artist named Ruby (played by Jena Malone). Ruby is transfixed by Jesse’s beauty and convinces her to go to a party where an elaborate suspension is taking place. This scene is shot really beautifully and looks almost 3D with its strobes and lighting. Here, Ruby introduces Jesse to two fellow models, Sarah (played by Mad Max Fury Road’s Abbey Lee Kershaw) and Gigi (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies). Both are jaded and deride her potential as a model. The dialogue is very stilted and halting and there is a lot of tension building to what seems to be a dark tale of Los Angeles’ glamorous side gone awry.

Unfortunately, while the potential is there, The Neon Demon never develops outside the shiny wrapper of the films and filmmakers whose style and aesthetic Refn borrows wholesale without developing or expounding upon. If you are a fan of the films of David Lynch, Roman Polanski, Tony Scott and Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Neon Demon will seem very familiar. If you enjoyed Mulholland Drive, The Holy Mountain & The Hunger, the film will frustrate you with its ham-fisted apeing of those films without the nuance, symbolism or commentary those films had about their subject. Refn’s film is full of thinly written archetypes; the naive innocent turned jaded seductress, the former beauty turned psychic vampire, photographer as a god figure. None are developed beyond their initial appearance. The film relies on set pieces to shock and tittilate; most notably one involving a masturbatory case of necrophelia and another an eroticized scene of cannibalism. But neither of these are all that shocking, inasmuch as displaying the film’s reliance on shock and artifice to pad out its thin story.

The film’s true star is the beautiful and haunting score composed by Cliff Martinez. Martinez’ music is what made Drive so memorable and here it succeeds in creating emotion where the lack of direction doesn’t convey any on screen. The cinematography is also superb to the credit of director of photography Natasha Brier who utilized 1960’s era lenses to accommodate Refn’s refusal to shoot on film, giving the film an ethereal look.

Ultimately, Refn’s film fails because it slavishly is trying to ape the style of other films but relying on artifice to carry a weak story. These people are nowehere near as fascinating as Refn thinks they are and the film does a poor job of convincing us their downfall is even worth invoking a neon demon to chronicle.