The Neon Demon

I’m so tempted to put a link to Krusty saying “what the hell was that?!?” and be done, because that really sums up my feelings on this pile of crap. But I should elaborate. Watching this, I couldn’t help but be reminded of three other movies: Perfect Blue, Helter Skelter, and Starry Eyes. All three deal with a young woman, stardom, and the price of fame, but all of them go at it from different angles, and to masterful effect. Perfect Blue deals with someone already famous, but for a squeaky clean image, and wants to branch out, and the movie finds horror (among other places) in the mental discord she faces of wanting to maintain her connection to her fans but wanting more artistic satisfaction but finding the price of the transition to be more than she bargained for. Helter Skelter looks at someone also already famous, but so bored and detached from it, and threatened the new hotness coming up, she sinks into escalating hedonism and madness. And Starry Eyes looks at someone not famous but desperate to be so and wrestling with what price she is willing to pay to get what she wants. They’re all very intelligent, moving, gripping examinations of fame, the pressures of fame on women (especially young women), and the predatory industry around them. And none of them feel explorative, cheap, or driven by the male gaze. I bring all these up because this movie wants to be in the pantheon of those movies, and stylistically, apes a fair bit of their content, but fails at every aspect of it. The Neon Demon, ostensibly, is about a dewy eyes ingenue trying to break into modeling in LA. Everybody she meets is either skeezy and predatory or desperately infatuated with her. Because the movie doesn’t bother giving us a sense of a timeframe, it feels like a couple weeks go by and she goes from being a nobody who just arrived from Hayseed, Arkansas, to global superstar. She doesn’t fall into hedonism or get catty with the competition, she doesn’t feel taken advantage of and actually manages to defend herself when needed … which gives her character no arc to speak of. She shows up, pervs wanna fuck her and the industry treats her like the second coming of Kate Upton, and … that’s it. Things happen AROUND her and TO her, but she doesn’t change at all. It fundamentally misses the point of the journey of those other three movies. We the viewers don’t know, can’t know, the ins and outs of celebrity life. The whole idea of turning it into a horror movie is to show how this eats away at what makes the lead character human. There is none of that here. And a big part of that problem is Elle Fanning. She is wrong for this role. She plays the lead Jesse like a dead-eyed zombie instead of an naive waif. Even later, when she’s embracing her position or even questioning it (and I’ll get to that in a minute), she hasn’t had to go through anything because the industry has worshipped her from the moment she got there. Her protests and disillusionment feel flat and forced, and still come off with the sleepy, disinterested performance she has given all the way through. And what I’m about to say next may be controversial, but it’s how I feel, so fuck it; she’s not hot enough for the role either. She’s far too girl next door cute. This role needed either someone drop-dead gorgeous or someone with an ethereal, almost unbelievable beauty. And I say that not as a dig against Elle Fanning, because she is cute; I say that because the movie wants the viewer to think Jesse is the most striking, unparalleled beauty anyone has ever seen. It just doesn’t make sense. And that leads into the next problem: this movie keeps TELLING the viewer that Jesse is once-in-a-lifetime gorgeous. She has “it”. But it never shows us what this “it” is. She is never given any depth or color. She is the same bland, semi-vacuous person in her first frame as she is in her last. Nothing about her beauty or posture or personality indicates there is anything that should make this girl a supermodel. It is hard for the viewer to believe her journey when it can’t sell why the journey is happening. Now, I’m sure some will say “that’s the point, it’s a commentary on the shallowness of the industry, she’s not supposed to have defining characteristics”, and to that I say no. A bug isn’t a feature because you say it is, and here’s why. A movie has to tell a story, and it does so by manufacturing an emotional connection to the characters. The viewers are supposed to have an emotional investment in the journey. The other three movies I mentioned before show how valid and soulless the industry can be and how it is a meat grinder for young women. In Helter Skelter, the main character Liliko, is no more than 25; she is stunningly gorgeous, still in high demand, and yet the industry within the movie sees her as too old for the business, so her behavior becomes increasingly erratic as she can’t cope with the idea of not being Japan’s sex symbol. In Perfect Blue, main character Mina goes from a bubblegum pop group to her first acting role, which goes from a walk on part on a cop show to a featured role where she is stripped nude and violently raped. She questions whether she is ready for a featured role in her first go around, and moreover, questions whether such a role will alienate the fans she has and ruin her image. In Starry Eyes. Sarah finds the acting industry is unwilling to welcome her without making her pay a heavy price, and her friends either sabotage her or weigh her down, and she slowly cracks under the self-applied pressure until she decides the heavy price the industry demands is worth it. There is growth and evolution in these movies. The lead characters have purpose and direction, and most important, definition. Apprehension, desperation, fear, resentment. And it paints a picture of the industry these women are in: exploitative, shallow, ravenous, treating them like expendable commodities. The Neon Demon doesn’t bother with any of that. Jesse is special because the movie says so. The industry within the movie is not shown as uncaring and carnivorous, and the one instance of her getting a job over another, slightly older model, is not because of backstabbing or machinations; it’s because She’s So Special. There is no protagonist and no antagonist, so there is no conflict, so the journey is devoid of forward momentum. That is not some deep commentary on shallowness, or some indictment of the industry or fame. That is lazy writing. And then, to top it all off, when you get to where the movie feels like it is logically and mercifully ending, nope, another 15-20 minutes, where the male gaze goes into creepy overdrive (they had to get every other actress naked because Elle was underage, and it LEERS at these women with disgusting zeal, even though they’re also soaked in blood), and the tone goes from pompous art student faux-depth to hyper-violent, Rob Zombie-style psychotic carnage. It comes out of nowhere, and it is handled as gracefully as an earthquake. And when it finally ends, it does just that; it ends, coldly and matter of factly. It doesn’t wrap everything up, it doesn’t feel like the end point of the story. It just stops. We’re outta time, folks! Tip the usher on the way out! The only thing that works in this movie is the visuals. There are some really cool visual moments in this movie. But it is not nearly enough to make it worth your while. This is movie that wants to be profound, but fails to know how to do it in the most embarrassing way. It looked at what three other excellent movies did and copies their answers but not the questions, so it has no context or understanding of what needs to happen and why for anything to make sense. Go watch any of the other three movies if you want to see a horror movie about the perils of fame, especially Starry Eyes if you want a “new kid in town swallowed up by the machine” story. Don’t watch this. Ir sucks.