The Neon Demon Dvd

The Neon Demon is a 2016 psychological horror film directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, co-written by Mary Laws, Polly Stenham, and Refn, and starring Elle Fanning. The plot follows an aspiring model in Los Angeles whose beauty and youth generate intense fascination and jealousy within the industry. Supporting roles are played by Karl Glusman, Jena Malone, Bella Heathcote, Abbey Lee, Desmond Harrington, Christina Hendricks, and Keanu Reeves.

An international co-production between France, Denmark, and the United States, the film competed for the Palme d’Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, the third consecutive film directed by Refn to do so, following Drive (2011) and Only God Forgives (2013). In the United States, the film was released theatrically on June 24, 2016 by Amazon Studios and Broad Green Pictures. It opened to polarized reviews, and ultimately grossed a little over $3 million against a $7 million budget.

Plot

Following the death of her parents, sixteen-year-old aspiring model Jesse has just moved from small-town Georgia to Los Angeles. She meets photographer Dean, who does her first shoot, and makeup artist Ruby, who introduces fellow older models Sarah and Gigi. The three women are intrigued by Jesse’s natural beauty and curious about her sexual proclivities. Jesse feigns experience in the latter.

Jesse is signed by Roberta Hoffman, the owner of a modeling agency, who tells her to pretend she is nineteen and refers her to a test shoot with notable photographer Jack McCarther. The shoot is successful, and Gigi and Sarah envy Jesse’s youth. Jesse goes to a casting call for fashion designer Robert Sarno, where Sarah is also present. He pays no attention to Sarah but is entranced by Jesse. A distraught Sarah asks her how it feels to be the one everyone admires. Jesse admits, “It’s everything.” Sarah lunges toward her, and Jesse accidentally cuts her hand on glass. Sarah sucks the blood from Jesse’s hand. Jesse rushes back to her motel and faints, hallucinating strange images.

At Sarno’s fashion show, Gigi tells Jesse about the cosmetic surgery she has had done. As Jesse is closing the show, she sees a vision of the glowing triangle she hallucinated before. After the show, a visibly-changed Jesse goes out with Dean to a bar. There, Sarno denigrates women who have cosmetic surgery, using a humiliated Gigi as an example. In contrast, he praises Jesse’s natural looks. Dean challenges Sarno’s view and tries to convince Jesse to leave, but she rejects him, now displaying a new narcissistic persona.

Jesse has a nightmare of being forced by Hank, the lecherous motel owner, to sexually swallow a knife. She wakes up to hear someone fidgeting with her door lock. She quickly turns the deadbolt, but is left to listen as the intruder breaks into the next room and assaults the female occupant. Terrified, she calls Ruby, who tells her to come over. Ruby tries to initiate sex with her, but Jesse rejects her, revealing herself to be a virgin. Ruby draws a lipstick face symbol on Jesse’s mirror, and leaves for her second job as a makeup artist at a morgue, where she pleasures herself with a female corpse.

Ruby returns home and finds Jesse now unabashed in her narcissism. Sarah and Gigi arrive and attack Jesse. Ruby pushes her into an empty swimming pool, breaking her leg. The women then approach her with knives. After they butcher Jesse and consume parts of her body, they all bathe in her blood. Ruby is revealed to have occult tattoos. She lies in Jesse’s unmarked grave, and later, nude in her house as a torrent of blood gushes from her genitals.

The next day, Sarah and Gigi attend one of Jack’s shoots with another model named Annie. Jack is suddenly enthralled with Sarah and fires Annie. In the midst of the shoot, Gigi feels ill and leaves. Sarah watches Gigi vomit up one of Jesse’s eyeballs. She screams with regret, “I need to get her out of me”, and stabs herself with a pair of scissors. Sarah watches Gigi die, eats the regurgitated eyeball, and returns to the shoot.

The end credits scene shows a woman, who does not show her face but looks like Sarah, walking alone in the Mojave Desert.

Cast

Elle Fanning as Jesse
Karl Glusman as Dean
Jena Malone as Ruby
Bella Heathcote as Gigi
Abbey Lee as Sarah
Desmond Harrington as Jack McCarther
Christina Hendricks as Roberta Hoffman
Keanu Reeves as Hank
Alessandro Nivola as Robert Sarno
Charles Baker as Mikey
Jamie Clayton as Casting Director
Houda Shretah as Sarno’s assistant