Delayed Reaction: The Neon Demon

The Pitch: The modeling world as a surreal, waking nightmare.

First of all, I totally get why this would evoke strong reactions, positive and negative, from people. To some degree I admire how boldly polarizing it is. It has a pitch black view of the world, more specifically the modelling world. It goes overboard to make its points. Refn is one of those directors who shoots his films with such assurance that you just assume he knows what he is doing and that the movie is going somewhere. It turns out, that's debatable. I kind of loved the bizarreness of the ending. It fit with the rest of the movie.

Elle Fanning, Jena Malone, Bella Heathcote, and Abbey Lee are giving ice-cold performances. They are props more than characters. Fanning, I think, was giving a good performance. It's a little hard to tell. I'm still trying to figure out what Keanu Reeves was doing in this. I don't get why he would take a small role like the hotel manager. He was fine, just not required for the part.

The plotting is nearly as thin as the characters, but Refn strings together enough cool visual and bizarre moments that I actually liked the movie, which I wasn't expecting to. There's definitely moments of excess and times when Refn is trying to have his cake and eat it too (He's commenting on the objectification of the modeling world, but this is also shot in the male gaze). I don't figure I'll ever want to revisit the film, but it was worth seeing once.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend