0:00 – 49:42

49:42 – 1:54

Best Keanu: “I’m just being friendly.”

There’s a lot of disturbing stuff in The Neon Demon.

So much disturbing stuff, as a matter of fact, that the movie takes you to a point of deep disturbance, then, having gone past the point of feeling oh-so-deeply disturbed, it takes you further, where you kind of circle back again in your mind and remember it’s a movie. Just a bizarre movie that started with great promise and ended on something strange and rather pointless.

The film is beautifully shot, making a statement, perhaps, about the body, and aesthetics, and beauty, and the image, and youth, and plastic fame objectification, and whatever else. I went with it for the first while, even allowing the first few early disturbing scenes to play out, forgiving the movie for being what I imagine many film-school outings to be: largely about the image, less about the story.

But then the narrative decides it’s not content with a simple exploration of Hollywood exploitation and goes in a dumb direction.

As I write this, I realize the reason I rate The Neon Demon 4.5/5 for the first 49:42 and 1.5/5 for the remainder is that it’s ultimately anti-feminist, almost misogynistic. It’s tough to explain, but I feel like this movie started off as an examination of how beauty traps women but turned into an ugly exposition of women as vacant, soulless caricatures. There’s no lesson here for women, not even a meaningful commentary on Hollywood itself as a box where women are packaged as the object of the day and then discarded.

The Neon Demon hates women, and I think it hates lesbians too. I can come up with no other explanation for the arc of the Jena Malone character, Ruby, save some weird backstory that I really would rather not know.

There are good people in this movie. Malone, who to me will likely always be the young Jodie Foster in Contact, is someone I almost always enjoy watching. Not in this case, but that’s not Malone’s fault except for the fact that she apparently freely signed on for this role.

Elle Fanning plays Jesse, the film’s central focus, and she’s perfectly cast in a crappy film. Jesse is a newly-arrived-in-LA 16-year-old who hopes to be a model. She explains to her photographer boyfriend that she doesn’t have much talent, but she’s pretty, and can make money off of pretty.

Little does she know what’s in store.

There are two other plastic models who also circle about, inexplicably at first, with the Jena Malone character. Gigi (Bella Heathcote) and Sarah (Abbey Lee), don’t hide their jealousy of Jesse, for the ease with which she gets coveted modeling gigs. They clearly hate her, and why they have a friendship with Ruby requires explanation — which the movie eventually offers, in disturbing, surrealistic, women-hating detail.

Jesse’s naive, of course, and she is unsafe at every turn.

She’s even unsafe in her makeshift home, a run-down motel. The building’s less-than-virtuous manager, Hank, is played by Keanu Reeves. (And, no, contrary to the quote, he is not being friendly.) In an early scene, Jesse’s first threat at home turns out not to be a man with a knife — that comes later, and it’s Hank who’s holding it — but a mountain lion who’s gotten into her suite.

(So with The Neon Demon and Destination Wedding, that’s so far two Keanu Reeves movies that feature encounters with mountain lions. Please, if you have to choose one, choose Destination Wedding.)

Even despite the fact that I could, and was going to, call The Neon Demon art during its first 49 minutes, aptly displaying exploitation, vulnerability, desperation, and competition, under layers of beautiful aesthetics, I would never recommend watching this movie. The fact that Keanu Reeves plays a bad guy — a rare occurrence — is just another reason why this film can just be skipped.

There is a whole list of other films, television series, novels, plays, and pieces of art with more compelling thematic nuances and are just as, if not more, visually appealing. Those pieces of art achieve those feats without misogyny and homophobia. Don’t waste your time on The Neon Demon, even if you can watch this piece of shit for free.

April 2022