Review of The Neon Demon (2016) by Tor M — 03 Nov 2017

A few years ago Nicolas Winding Refn made Drive. A movie with a familiar story but a new and exciting style, it was subtle and brutal but beautiful in it's own way. It was in my opinion the best movie of 2011 but others who where not so enthusiastic called it boring and all style and no substance but with The Neon Demon he has defiantly produced the latter.

First of all this film is boring. The characters are cold and distant with no back story to speak of, which I understand it trying to comment on how models are treated like blank canvases to be used like objects and not people but this statement however interesting does not make compelling characters.

The story is slow and uninteresting for the most part and populated by uninteresting people. That is until the last 15-20 minutes, where the film (labelled a horror) shows you it's hand, and it's not scary it's just disgusting.

Filled with insane reveals and plot points that may have been interesting if these scenes where creepy psychologically but all it did was make me wish I'd never bothered to watch this beautifully shot mess that goes from the slow to the insane, neither successfully.