The Neon Demon (2016)
Starring: Elle Fanning, Keanu Reeves, Jena Malone, Bella Heathcote, Abbey Lee, Christina Hendricks, Karl Glusman
Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn
Rating: 
Another Saturday afternoon, another vicious swipe at the fashion industry, this time courtesy of art house enfant terrible Nicolas Winding Refn.
Despite the hypnotically boring awfulness of Only God Forgives, I was looking forward to this movie, expecting super-slick styling and glacially gorgeous glamour, laced with blood-soaked ultraviolence and set to a pounding, achingly cool soundtrack of '80s electronica. All of which I got – but stitched together with a whacking seam of tedium and misogyny.
Jessie (Elle Fanning) is a sweet 16-year-old orphan who comes to LA to make it as a model. She's picked up by an agency and photographed and then (yadda yadda fell asleep it was reeeeally slooow) then basically everyone in her life turns on her (including – for that full '80s feel – Keanu Reeves), either because they're spurned and/or jealous or (more likely) because she's really bland and annoying.
'Beauty is not everything, it's the only thing,' opines a pompous designer from somewhere inside his own arse. But beauty is not enough to save a baggy plot that heroically manages to be both horrifically taboo-breaking and teeth-grindingly boring, a series of vacuous women being vile to each other strung together with the acute psychological insight of a Carry On film.
Fair enough, the movie's obsession with mirrors and water, narcissism and masturbation, its voyeuristic display of objectified body parts, are no doubt meant to reflect the self-absorbed superficiality of the fashion world, a world that, in this case, is literally dog eat dog... or bitch eat bitch.
A mirror yes, but a dark, distorting one. And one I got very tired of gazing into. Oh lordy, I thought it would never end.
If a sh*t version of Suspiria with models, necrophilia and no witches sounds like your brew then by all means be my guest. But while I may have forgiven Refn for Only God Forgives, only God can forgive The Neon Demon...