A second viewing accentuates the evil menace of Nicolas Winding Refns thriller,and Elle Fanning’s excellent performance as a girl devoured by beauty
Evil floats, weightlessly, or across the landscape of Los Angeles in Nicolas Winding Refn’s modern film: The Neon Demon,co-scripted with TV writer Mary Laws and British dramatist Polly Stenham. It is a reverie of such sheer satanic rapture that Refn could be in danger of taking Bret Easton Ellis’s crown as the Aleister Crowley of the 21st century. This does in fact resemble The Canyons, the rather underrated film Ellis wrote for Paul Schrader. Both films find something abysmally sinister in the Californian landscape.
The Neon Demon is the most obviously outrageous film Refn has ever made: an explicit horror thriller that periodically zones out into wordless drifting and ambient menace. It is a mad ballet of envy, and erotic obsession,necrophilia and cannibalism. Related: The Neon Demon review: Nicolas Winding Refn makes Zoolander 3, but erotic and evil Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com