I had some hopes the Neon Demon would be worth checking out. I'd put it on the list but only bothered with it today when one of the Red Letter Media guys gave it (too much I know now) praise. Spoilers, by the way. I'm here to vent, remember?
This seeks to be Mulholland Drive if that were about models rather than desperate actresses from small towns with little to no backstory or family to speak of. Only the tension created by Lynch was perfect and the mystery of Mulholland Drive was captivating. The Neon Demon becomes insufferable in its own desperation to create some kind of stylish, clever commentary on the modeling/fashion industry as a whole, and consequentially winds up being almost parody.
While the men in the film are framed as predators and leches, they wind up being less of a threat than our main character's professional competition. Keanu Reeves generally fails coming off as the vile motel manager. The hopeful photographer boyfriend is harmless, almost milquetoast, and only gets stepped on by our main, Jesse (Fanning).
Ellie Fanning obviously has a background in modelling so she's so convincing in this part from that perspective, but she's given fuck all to work with in the guise of crappy dialogue and a vague script that may have resulted in some improvisation. The heavy-handed cliches of her catching the eye of the otherwise the unenthusiastic fashion designer and wowing the agent who's seen plenty of girls before her who were only "good" makes her less compelling and more boring. So you don't care about what happens to her, especially when the narcissism kicks in. The visuals cease to be interesting or intriguing. There was a weird Zeldaesque triforce pattern that didn't pertain to anything, except maybe the trio who eventually descend on Jesse. Jena Malone is more capable than this too, she can do a lot but again she's doing the whole indie gay for pay thing, and while you find out she has more to her life as a makeup artist, being a mortician's assistant doing the makeup for dead bodies, you discover the real reason for this and you're left sickened by it. She has to be left alone with a dead body after Fanning rejects her aggressive advances (yes there's lesbian attempted rape here too) and the body has to fucking suffer for this rejection while you're supposed to be distracted by Malone fantasising over Fanning with the juxtaposing shots. The rating guideline describes this as aberrant sexual behaviour. I describe it as appallingly unnecessary.
The cannibalism aspect is only slightly more understandable when you think of the cliches of "you'll be eaten alive out there" or "bathing in the blood of your enemies", but again this is all done for cheap and schlocky grotesquery and it's annoying. The occult overtones as well weren't all that creative, okay yeah the three "victims" of Jesse's success decide to join forces and be done with her, but there's no real sense of them being drawn to demonic behaviour until you see the tattoos on Ruby's (Malone's) body. The drawn out, laborious, self indulgent conclusion isn't a satisfactory payoff either. You have no feelings for anyone except maybe the hapless Gigi who's a plastic surgeons wet dream but fails to hold any uniqueness and thus loses the adoration of the industry, and you're meant to suppose that in her madness she goes along with disposing of Jesse. We discover the demon in the end, that being Sarah, but I found her more compelling when she was sulking from her rejection, and at least her taste for human blood is established here when she's lapping up Jesse's blood from an open wound. Sarah's played by an Australian model Abby Lee, and she had moments that were quite good, but again the dialogue is stilted and badly delivered. No one is given a chance to really shine here despite all of four girls being relatively or highly capable performers, most of all Fanning and Malone.
Don't go into this expecting pure abstract imagery or an interesting story line. Even the coven/witch/trio imagery is unimaginative if that is what it pertained to. The minimalist approach in terms of never seeing the adoring crowds at the fashion show, or really anyone in the way of extras for the fact it's set in LA, seems to hint more at a money saving aspect than anything. It's a pointless exercise and it would leave most sensible people bored, annoyed and/or disgusted rather than riveted or engaged. The score becomes overbearing, again with Lynch he knows how to use Angelo Badalamenti's scores effectively and beautifully in films, you're never inundated with it like you are with Neon Demon's techno/atmospheric soundtrack. I was extremely disappointed in this all around. You're not going to get an interesting think piece on the modelling industry, like I said, it plays almost like parody and can't be taken seriously at all.
