Driving by her big talent and ambitious in the field of modelling, Jesse, a 16 year old beautiful and attractive girl, travels to Los Angeles, where she dreams of having a new and successful professional life, but there, incidents come to frustrate her, as she faces many challenges and the jealous models.
Refn is hardly the first moviemaker to find a link between supermodels and scary monsters, but he may be the most style-minded one to make the connection. Imagine an issue of Vogue with Maleficent as guest editor.
A thrilling, more delirious and ethereal story than an abnormal narrative, from a plot-pretext and juicy cinephilic references to the work of great directors of the first wave of french cinema. [Full review in Spanish]
Archly silly, quotable, visually hypnotic and perfectly suited for repeat viewings. On first watch, the film is bizarre, hallucinatory, shockingly gruesome. A second watch unlocks the dumb-clever charms of Refn's script
The Neon Demon is as deceptive as shattered glass, with a brilliant beauty so mesmerizing that you don't notice its murderously sharp edges until you're bleeding all over the floor.
There's no denying the beauty of Refn's images, even if his puerile instincts are at odds with his obvious pretensions. Those who cry it's shallow and ugly won't be wrong; others will love it for those very reasons.
Pretentious and self-indulgent, it seems tailor-made to appeal to lovers of the obtuse and inscrutable until it takes a left-turn into schlocky, gore-drenched splatter imagery.