The Neon Demon (2016) or, Jesse Goes to Hollywood

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Elle Fanning looks glamorous, sprinkled in gold on a poster for Nicolas Winding Refn's The Neon Demon

The Neon Demon is the 10th film from Danish master co-writer/co-producer/director Nicolas Winding Refn (Pusher II (2004)), who has written it with Mary Laws and Polly Stenham (Eleanor (2015), short).

Jesse is a young, beautiful girl who has traveled to Los Angeles to pursue her dream of becoming a supermodel. But she meet a ferocious, cynical world there that's gonna chew her up and spit her out, if she doesn't make sure to take care of herself.

Neon Demon is a bit of a disappointment. It doesn't live up to the heights of Refn's recent spectacles like Valhalla Rising (2009), Drive (2011) or Only God Forgives (2013). For me it's his weakest since Bronson (2008), which I've never been able to really like. But as an avid Refn fan, I still liked Neon Demon, which is as appropriately vacuous (for a film about the modeling world), slow and periodically transgressive as to succeed in getting people to inevitably form opinions about it, (as Refn's movies usually do.)
There are many things to critique about it: It's first of all too slow, I think. The long periods of faces in lights and music, (Cliff Martinez (Drive) has once again created a spine-tingling, cool, electro-score), often don't contribute enough to justify their length, and this time they bog the film down. - I'm sure I'm not alone in having wished for more story and action instead. We get very little knowledge about Jesse, and the demonic aspect (illustrated by a mysterious triangle and crystals, which seem to signify the attraction of beauty and attention that gobble up our protagonist in the course of the film) is also understated to put it mildly, (underdeveloped if you want the harsher version.) The film references The Shining (1980) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and is a slow, artsy meditation/very dark satire of different beauty standards, ideals and methods today, until it picks up a bit of pace and becomes more of a horror film.

A retro-styled poster for Nicolas Winding Refn's The Neon Demon

Elle Fanning (Somewhere (2010)) does well in the lead, who is innocence arriving to be corrupted, it seems, but perhaps also an innocence that is already tainted from home? SPOILER As Jesse's ego-centrism and megalomania begins to become grating, she gets killed off, and the film thus seems to come to a very sudden finish. SPOILER - But there is more, and especially the pool scene that finishes the film was an effective gross-out cap, I thought.
Jena Malone (10 Cent Pistol (2014)) gives an eerie performance with maximum yuck factor; Bella Heathcote (In Time (2011)) is an effectively icy über-bitch; Abbey Lee (Gods of Egypt (2016)) is chilling; Desmond Harrington (Dexter (2008-13)) is good as probably the most sympathetic character; Alessandro Nivola (The Eye (2008)) makes a fine, arrogant fashion designer, and both Keanu Reeves (Street Kings (2008)) and Christina Hendricks (Dark Places (2015)) are good as two of the city's regular scumbags, although we get precious little of them both here, regrettably.
The Neon Demon has cool photography by Natasha Braier (The Rover (2014)) and moves around in the thematic waters of narcissism, perception of beauty, youth vs. aging, dominance-subordination and abstinence vs. carnality.

Related reviews:

Nicolas Winding Refn: 2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]  
Only God Forgives (2013) - Violent beauty in Bangkok
2011 in films - according to Film Excess
Drive (2011) - Refn's muscle-flexing audience favorite  
Bronson (2008) or, Violent Man
Bleeder (1999) - Refn's mysterious second film  

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 7 mil. $
Box office: Not known yet
= Unknown
[The Neon Demon premiered May 20 (Cannes) and runs 117 minutes. The film was shot in LA from March 2015 onward. Its American distribution rights were acquired by Amazon Studios. The film was shown in competition in Cannes, where Martinez won an award for his music in it. The film will open in most of its markets in the course of the summer. The Neon Demon is rotten at 47 % with a 5.8 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Neon Demon?

Blood and Black Lace/Sei Donne per l'Assissino/Six Women for the Murderer (1964) or, The Fashionista Killer

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One of the irresistible posters for Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace

QUICK REVIEW:

The masked, leather-glove-wearing serial killer, who wreaks havoc in a Roman fashion house in Blood and Black Lace could be just about anyone of the characters in the film, and he gets characterized by the police commissioner as a "sex maniac in a homicidal fury!"
Italian horror master Mario Bava (The Mask of Satan (1960)) had a real knack for atmospheric lighting in grotesque, flamboyant set-ups in often extravagant environments, - a knack that proves a 'recipe for success' in Lace. The film is said to be the first so-called 'body-count' horror movie, a great inspiration for the American horror films, and the slashers in particular, of the 80s. It is also regarded as the first Italian giallo film. Giallo is an Italian pulp crime whodunit genre with explicit murders, countless shady characters and first person atrocities.
The dialog and acting  in Lace (which is dubbed) is uneven, often making the film involuntarily funny, and logic is pretty hard to come by in this largely stylistic film that also features several beautiful and often scantily clad models.
A fun trivia: The Danish title for Lace can be translated to 'The Iron Hand in the Night of Terror', a truly ludicrous title in itself, but especially enigmatic for people who have seen the film, which doesn't involve any 'iron hand' nor happens during one night of terror, but over the course of several.
Bava died nearly 34 years ago, and Italian cinema, and the Italian horror scene especially, is today far from the creativity and flourish of past decades, alas.

Here are some more pictures of Bava's remarkable light work and compositions, and two more posters for this eye candy, gritty horror. Click to enlarge

Related review:

Mario Bava, cinematographer: Hercules Unchained (1959) - Spaghetti decadence never fades

Watch the sensationalist trailer here

Budget: 0.15 mil. $
Box office: 123 mil. ITA (only Italy)
= Uncertainty

What do you think of Blood and Black Lace?
What is Bava's best film/s?