The Neon Demon Review

An aspiring young model Jesse (Elle Fanning) heads to the big city to pursue the big times as she knows clearly that the beauty she has is what everyone else wants. There she meets a group of ladies that are not only fierce, but somewhat crazy in their pursuit of beauty. Jesse begins to quickly turn heads and makes fast ground while also having to deal with the dark situations that surround the industry.

It's an interesting comment on the modeling industry in general and the film itself was rather different from really anything I've seen. Most of it is actually really tense which was good and it was even decent until a bit later in the story where things take a turn for the absolute weird. I'm typically fine with films that integrate certain levels of gore and was even fine here, it just got a bit too strange or even too much by the end.

The film was also a bit obsessed with flash despite trying to be a comment on such a thing and lacked the substance for a solid experience. This was a bit disappointing as it had captured the right mood and instead of creating a compelling story went a bit too creepy ultimately losing direction.

The acting was well done in the film with everyone matching their beauty obsessed roles with Fanning particularly nailing that pretty yet innocent girl that gets ahead of herself. Another notable performance was with Keanu Reeves playing an awful motel owner that provided the majority of the comic relief in the film gathering a laugh each time he appeared. I also wanted to mention that Jena Malone played a fantastic role as one of Jesse's "friends" in the whole scenario and she was particularly strange which matched the role well.

The cinematography was absolutely beautiful in this film, there were many long drawn out scenes that looked stunning and this is again where the flash comes into play. While these scenes were gorgeous and filled with lovely bright colors too few added anything to the film aside from being for glamour. Still, I want to say that the shots were stunning and greatly distinct being something I'll remember for a long time.

The Conclusion

The Neon Demon was an alright film, it lost focus at a certain point I won't mention as it'll be a bit too spoilerish and that was disappointing. There was also sadly far too much flash with the scenes and not enough substance to turn this into a perfect film. It just lacked story elements which was odd considering they had created such well done tension and cinematography.

I also wanted to mention that I loved the music in the film as it matched the aspects quite well while being somewhat of an ominous tone in the background. It really was a decent film perhaps a bit too graphic for some and ended up having strange moments come up often that didn't quite assist with the flow of the film. This is definitely something different for those that want to see a movie that's completely unique, but I was looking for the film to have more to it.

Review for The Neon Demon at Theater with Standard Viewing
Screening Provided by D Films Corp

Rating Overall: 5.5