Monday, October 3, 2016

Film Review - The Neon Demon (2016)

The Neon Demon is the new film by Nicholas Winding Refn and stars Elle Fanning as Jesse a young girl who goes to Los Angeles in the hope of making it as a model and she earns the envy of 2 older models (Abbey Lee and Bella Heathcote) as well as a local makeup artist (Jena Malone.)

The Neon Demon certainly is interesting as can normally be the case with Refn's work, there's no hiding his style when you're watching it and this film is no exception as to look at the film and listen to the soundtrack by Cliff Martinez are quite good and the performances for the most part are not that bad, Lee and Heathcote are okay and Keanu Reeves has a good role but Malone is the real show stealer here and she is fantastic in every single scene she has in the movie.

Unfortunately the film completely loses its nerve in the third act and pretty much decides to pull the knives out and let the bitchiness take over and this part of the film really lost me almost entirely and I began to just sit there and become impatient with the damned film and by the time it ended I just did not care anymore and I wanted it to be over.

It also doesn't help that Fanning is slightly miscast with her soft voice that becomes a little tiresome after a while and also I feel that along with Zack Snyder, Ridley Scott and Tim Burton Refn could really really do with a strong right hand as his screenwriter as all 4 of these men I feel are so visual in their style of directing and it informs heavily how they see their films that sometimes they lose their way in the story and character departments and Refn could really use a strong screenwriter on future projects.

And so that was the Neon Demon which was interesting enough but not really all that special I'm afraid, 2 out of 5.

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