The Neon Demon

”Beauty isn't everything. It's the only thing.” Beautiful opening and end credits, largely thanks to Cliff Martinez, who looks like he might become one of the greatest film composers of the future. But that’s where the enthusiasm ends. It would be a pity if we stopped looking forward to Refn’s movies and were instead only curious about them. It seems like that is what he tried to achieve here, forgetting that he earned his biggest success (not just in Cannes) thanks to a story with heart (Drive), elevated by his unique style of directing, not by that style alone. The Neon Demon is a simple film with a clear message. There is no puzzle arousing exciting intellectual debates like in Only God Forgives. In its simplicity and lack of surprising elements, the film replaces the possibility of getting emotionally involved in the story with purely visual storytelling, which looks attractive but leaves the viewer unmoved. But I guess you should see this, at least because of the slobbering over a corpse we’ve never seen in an A-movie before. [Cannes] (20/05/2016)

An audio-visual feast with fantastic acting performances (an excellent Desmond Harrington). The inner storyline is quite interesting, but overall the story lacks dynamism. As always, Winding Refn is in no hurry, but unfortunately the world of modeling offers no excuse for action, which occasionally helped Drive forward a little (also in places in Only God Forgives), the lesson is fairly simple, bizarre, but still clear, but it’s difficult to sum up the entire movie in a single intellectual exercise about the significance of individual scenes. The main problem, apart from the traditional remoteness, was the length. And so you must see the movie if only for the corpse licker and the visually refined composition of images. You’ll have to battle against viewer fatigue, because the Neon Demon has no soul. (24/09/2016)

I thought this was going to be a cinematic experience, but it's really just boring as hell. I almost had the feeling that the finale was just a beginner's attempt to shock as much as possible. And perhaps it worked a little because that suffocation can really affect a person. Very well acted. But otherwise, just disappointment from a boringly predictable, albeit intense, story that tries to be different in form. (11/10/2016)

After I watched this movie, I’ve got the feeling that Nicolas Winding Refn is drowning in his own filmmaking utopias. I get that the Neon Demon has a clear premise about modelling, but I don’t get the artistic pathos they’re using to get to the point. Sure, many of the scenes are very interesting and very pleasing to the eye, but as a whole, I feel like the movie’s just a concurrence of different scenes that don’t make much sense. The director’s lucky that he can choose the right music to his video. I fell for it with Drive, but it was a bit harder this time. (22/11/2016)

A non-mainstream, visually captivating, hypnotically immersive experience for those who can appreciate Nicolas Winding Refn's extraordinary visual sensibilities. But Refn is also explicitly provocative, completely unnecessarily so, and I could really do without a few scenes (sex in the morgue, yuck!). So when I add up the pros and cons, Refn ends up with a draw, but the kid has talent for more, much more. That's probably how Jaromil Jireš would shoot it when he was making Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, he would be a bit of a pervert and permanently on drugs. (05/10/2016)