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 The Neon Demon 

What grade would you give this film?
A 33%  33%  [ 4 ]
B 25%  25%  [ 3 ]
C 33%  33%  [ 4 ]
D 0%  0%  [ 0 ]
F 8%  8%  [ 1 ]
Total votes : 12

 The Neon Demon 
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Post The Neon Demon
The Neon Demon

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The Neon Demon is a 2016 internationally co-produced psychological thriller film directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and co-written by Mary Laws, Polly Stenham and Refn and starring Elle Fanning, Christina Hendricks and Keanu Reeves. The plot follows an aspiring model in Los Angeles whose beauty and youth place her in significant danger amongst the women she becomes associated with in the industry, who are murderous and dangerous.

In April 2016, it was announced that the film would compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, making the film the third consecutive film directed by Refn to compete for the Palme d'Or, following Drive and Only God Forgives.


Thu Jun 23, 2016 10:30 pm
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
Disturbing and fucking twisted. For the most part I was pretty into it, I was surprised.


Fri Jun 24, 2016 12:15 am
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
After misfiring with the beautiful, yet profoundly dull Only God Forgives, polarizing Danish provocateur Nicolas Winding Refn returns to form with The Neon Demon. The story of an innocent and unsophisticated Georgia teenager (Elle Fanning) whose beauty draws both covetous attention and brutal jealousy amid L.A.'s competitive modeling industry, the film finds the director's self-styled egoism on full display; after approximately twenty-five years of distributor and production-company logos, he adorns the screen with a stylized rendering of his initials, his brand. He then earns the self-regarding gesture with two hours of pure cinema, alternately ethereal and grotesque and always composed and cut with surgical precision. At times, one has to remember to breathe, so vivid is this enveloping and macabre light show. Fanning proves a highly adept ingénue. Her portrayal of the character's nocturnal journey, a deal-with-the-Devil realization of her own beauty and its immense power, complements and deepens the high-wire aesthetic fetishism. And with their diamond-slicing stares and porcelain, almost alien elegance, Bella Heathcote and Abbey Lee are striking as two more seasoned models envious of the heroine's overnight recognition, while Keanu Reeves sleazily savors the chance to play a lecherous motel owner, elevating an arguably extraneous part of the film.

A-

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Fri Jun 24, 2016 2:09 am
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
Magnus wrote:
I have no idea how one can call Only God Forgives a misfire and praise this.



I have no idea how anyone can even remotely like OGF. :p Awful movie. But to each their own. I hope I like this. There's no possible way I won't find it superior to OGF. It cannot be THAT terrible.


Fri Jun 24, 2016 3:55 am
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
Magnus wrote:
Drive is my favorite film of the last 5 years. Only God Forgives is very much underrated. I love models. I love models naked. I love models naked showering and rubbing themselves.

Despite all the above statements being true, I still couldn't convince myself that Neon Demon was worth any good grade. It's a bad movie. The style over substance defense just doesn't work. It's just shit.


Yeah, NWR has gotten pretentious as fuck. I mean starting with this NWR-branding...c'mon.

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Fri Jun 24, 2016 5:57 am
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
What sets this apart from Only God Forgives, among other details, is the fact it has interesting characters. Which is not to say incredibly deep or well-developed, but interesting. The Elle Fanning heroine is sympathetic; the Jena Malone character is mysterious; and the antagonistic models are bitchy, sexy, and enjoyably despicable.

Besides Kristin Scott Thomas' unpleasant camp, everyone in Only God Forgives is a stone wall, and the seductive style ultimately fails to distract from how tedious they and their exploits are.

I adore Winding Refn's aesthetic, but he has to grab me on another level, too, whether it is the love story and heist intrigue in Drive or Tom Hardy's beastly commitment in Bronson.

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Sat Jun 25, 2016 10:45 am
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
The Neon Demon is a horror film, a truly horrifying one. Jena Malone is an inspired choice as the titular demon, who engages in the fashion world's decades old practice of eating it's young, in this case cherubic Elle Fanning. It's too artsy by half, but in the end, that's what saves it. *B-*


Sat Jun 25, 2016 2:34 pm
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
I thought this movie had some interesting ideas, and the positives outweigh the negatives for sure. The soundtrack is one of Cliff Martinez's best, there are some truly stunning visuals and I thought the performances were strong across the board (particularly Elle Fanning, who perfectly embodies this character). But at the end of the day I felt that it didn't add up to anything. The story really went nowhere and the last-minute turn into horror that the movie takes feels very unearned in my opinion. The script is also absolutely awful - the scenes without dialogue are easily the best because most of the writing feels very amateurish. It's definitely got a hypnotic quality but overall this is a mixed bag - I'm still waiting for Refn to blow me away again like he did with Drive a few years ago. B-


Sun Jun 26, 2016 4:59 pm
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
Also, I cannot believe this got a wide release. What were they thinking?


Sun Jun 26, 2016 5:04 pm
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
It is rather amusing Jena Malone is French kissing a corpse in an auditoriums sandwiched between showings of Finding Dory and Independence Day across the nation.

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Sun Jun 26, 2016 6:03 pm
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
LOVED this from start to finish. It's so hypnotic and entrancing. A beautiful, twisted little film. After Refn disappointed me greatly with "Only God Forgives" I was kind of expecting to be disappointed again by this film. It looked cool but I knew not to get my hopes up like I did with that film. But he has scored again big time with "The Neon Demon." Obviously the cinematography and music are fantastic, but the story itself was actually interesting this time around. The performances were great too. I thought Elle Fanning, Jena Malone, Abbey Lee, and Bella Heathcote were all superb. Coupled with the magnificent visuals and score music this is an experience for the senses that was at times reminiscent of "Under The Skin," albeit a tad more accessible. I'm really glad I had the chance to experience it on the big screen. If its stay at my theater weren't so short-lived I would have tried to see it again.

Best film I've seen so far this year and one I don't see being able to get out of my head for a while.

9/10 (A)

On a side note, I saw this with three female friends (we had a movie day and had seen Independence Day, The Shallows, and this) and they all really LOVED it. I was surprised and very pleased about that. It's not exactly the most mainstream film. In fact, of the three we saw, it was everyone's favorite.


Wed Jun 29, 2016 1:19 pm
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
Under The Skin was much better than this.


Wed Jun 29, 2016 2:29 pm
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
thompsoncory wrote:
Under The Skin was much better than this.


Pretty much on par for me. I think Under The Skin might be a hair better but it's mostly a toss-up.


Wed Jun 29, 2016 2:41 pm
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
I wonder if this will stay the best film of the year for me. Even though it's still early-ish in the year I'm not sure anything upcoming will top it. Maybe, but if so it would probably be something that's not on my radar yet.


Sat Jul 02, 2016 12:26 am
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
After absolutely adoring Drive and LOATHING Only God Forgives, my expectations for this were not really there. I went in expecting nothing and walked out really loving the film. Elle Fanning and Jena Malone were both superb here and it was beautiful to look at and had a fantastic score. I loved the ideas and themes presented here and there was a lot of interesting underlying meaning. I wouldn't consider it a horror film by any means though. My one issue was Keanu Reeves' character. So annoying and relatively pointless.

A-

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Sat Jul 02, 2016 1:21 pm
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
From an aesthetic standpoint this film is a technical marvel to look at, but it felt so shallow and that's a bit of a problem for me. I never found it boring, but there wasn't a single character I cared about and at the end of the day it didn't really add up to anything. I was expecting them to do something cool with Keanu Reeves's character and they don't which was pretty disappointing. The performances are fine and I liked the score, but this is definitely a case of style over substance IMO.


Tue Sep 20, 2016 8:28 pm
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
Pretty fantastic. I had almost no expectations (didn't love Drive, didn't see his other movie, and hadn't heard much about this). But I was intrigued, then hypnotized, then entranced by this haunting vision. What a weird, beautiful, disturbing movie. Some of the looks Elle was given by Gigi and Sarah, even early on, were enough to scare me. The film is saturated with its own style to the point of oozing, and I love it; instead of hiding a lack of theme, story, or characters, the film's aesthetic augments all of these, and serves everything up on strange, pulsing runway for the audience to taste, and then devour.

One important aspect of grading a film is how long the film lingers in mind. Sometimes I'll love a movie at first and slowly forget about it as it loses impact. Some movies hit right away and you know you'll still be thinking about them days to come. This is one of those. On a related note, I'm reconsidering my modeling career.

A

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Mon Nov 21, 2016 9:44 am
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
Still the best of the year for me, followed by Manchester By The Sea and La La Land.


Mon Jan 09, 2017 2:37 pm
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
*** / ***** (C)

It's beautiful to look at. It's stylish as hell. Soundtrack is great. It's slow, but never dull. The only mistake is that's it's unbelievably underdeveloped. The characters are bare notions of an idea. The story is kept at a one line summation without any desire to expand the horizon. I think this could be recut into a 4 minute music video and it would cover the whole movie without missing anything important.


Thu Jan 12, 2017 4:15 pm
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
The Neon Demon is Refn continuing to regress from Drive. It's not a bad film, I guess you couldn't say there's no substance, but the film is definitely style over substance. The lead in the film is Elle Fanning and while I didn't find her particularly good, she grows in the role and the film grows with it. But either reach at most a level that's good but in terms of the film it's also not sustained. The story takes some wacky turn in the last part and that hurts it for me. Style wise I enjoyed the film quite a lot, but the script I can only describe as stupid. The acting is basically wooden, as a model would act I guess and maybe that's the point, but it doesn't evoke any emotion. And the dialogue is just dead simple, filler only really. The film is very much like a quote from the film that's in the vein of "only beauty matters, what's inside doesn't", it seems that's how Refn probably wished we'd only value the film on. It does have it's qualities, but ultimately I just find it a very lazy attempt of trying to create something special with a result that is something just very normal really.

C+


Mon Jan 30, 2017 12:34 pm
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
For reference:
Drive - A+
Only God Forgives - B+

Magnus wrote:
I have no idea how one can call Only God Forgives a misfire and praise this.

I feel, from reading the comments in this thread that everyone who disliked Only God Forgives all seem to be into The Neon Demon.


Last edited by stuffp on Mon Jan 30, 2017 12:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.



Mon Jan 30, 2017 12:37 pm
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
Magic Mike wrote:
at times reminiscent of "Under The Skin," albeit a tad more accessible.


This is exactly what I felt it related to as well. But I wasn't a fan of Under The Skin either, although I think I find that more accessible actually and graded it a bit higher too (B-).


Mon Jan 30, 2017 12:46 pm
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Post 
The Neon Demon

Winding Refn has crafted a provocative, beautifully haunting, psychological horror film. But it is weird and under-paced. Refn might be one of the best living directors, but he cannot seem to excel beyond a version of visual perfection where he is bound by his own ego. It's a shame because The Neon Demon has some enrapturing qualities; its powerful neon-infused cinematography and its stirring, electronic score are highlights in what I can only describe as Refn's love letter to David Lynch. Oh, and he managed to get a good performance out of Keanu Reeves.

C+

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Fri Feb 03, 2017 11:45 am
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
I think Refn would be a superb music-video director. His visuals and sense of music are second to none, but he has no idea how to tell a story.

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Fri Feb 03, 2017 11:49 am
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Post Re: The Neon Demon
Lesbian sex saves lives!

I was into this for awhile. Rifn can still craft a good story around his weirdo music video moments. The third act is a mess though. The main character gets eaten and the movie still goes on for another ten minutes! Ridiculous. Elle Fanning is a great actress for this style though and I hope he uses her again.


Thu Feb 09, 2017 8:53 pm
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