#Review: Neon Demon Disappointingly Shallow, and no, Not in a Sarcastic Way

I’m already a bit tired of summer blockbusters. The myriad of sequels, guys in capes, and negligent story-crafting seem to wear out their welcome earlier and earlier into the summer as the years go by with me. Writers seem to be drawing from a template these days in Hollywood. I laughed out loud watching Captain America: Civil War, when the catalyst for their decision to break up the Avengers came from remorse over a black kid being killed in the line of fire, which was the same reason the U.S. government was going to punish Superman in Batman vs. Superman, both because of the uncanny similarity and the total lack of awareness in the irony of it all (different rant for a different day). So, I jump at the chance to review something different. Something that catches my eye. Something that may not receive the credit it deserves but has a story to tell and a message to deliver. Neon Demon caught my eye. Not only did it look visually superb, but I’m a total sucker for the deliberate usage of color. It is used to affect your mood: shock you, perplex you, enrapture you and drag you along like a vicious undertow. The movie does all of these things, in seemingly effortless fashion. The beautifully-constructed motifs in Neon Demon are something to be studied and appreciate for sure, but was there anything else? Was there substance? I’ll be frank: it takes a good two hours to make a two minute point. And to make things worse, it made a point that I’m sure was adverse to what the storyteller was going for. Most of it plays like the Greek tragedy of Narcissus, or even that Twilight Zone episode where the girl let a witch turn her into a leopard at night in return for the affection of the guy she likes, except here, the “guy” is youth and attention, and Narcissus doesn’t meet his fate due to his narcissism. Instead, narcissism is rewarded, celebrated even. I left the theater scratching my head, wondering where did it go wrong? What was the point of this movie? The point of the movie was that white beauty standards really are the end-all-be-all for a lot of people in this country, and even a movie that’s supposedly even pseudo-aware of it can’t, or perhaps just won’t, relinquish it, even if it means gutting a potentially great film of any real substance. So, that’s what it was, Captain America in a dress and a lot of glitter.

Spoiler Alert:

The protagonist’s name is Jesse (the protag in that Twilight Zone episode’s name was Jess-Belle, by the way if you didn’t look it up, aha, nothing misses these eyes I tell ya). She meets female companion #1 Ruby, who comes out of nowhere after she finishes her first photo-shoot. Ruby is the homely make-up artist who seems to worship all the models. Enter Gigi and Sarah, frenemies and future rivals of Jesse, immediately put on guard by her youth and beauty. Sarah is the one who seems to see the writing on the wall when it comes to the short shelf-life of a model in this industry, and she’s very doom and gloom about it. Gigi is clearly in denial. She’s constantly in and out of the plastic surgeon’s office. Ruby helps Jesse get her foot in the door in the industry, and when she does, she is instantly praised and adored for her pure beauty. A commonly occurring theme in a lot of horror films, she’s also a virgin. At this point, I still have to give the movie credit. The narrative still illustrates a pitiful character: one who admits she has no talent, but knows she’s pretty, just not exactly how pretty just yet. I must also acknowledge my own “limitations” as I’m not afflicted by what tall, pale, and frail blond white women go through in terms of beauty standards. I’ve seen recreations of it time and time again, and, it’s just not that damn deep to me. I’m not compelled by Jesse’s plight, and am only left thinking about how much of an ass she was to Ruby the first time they met. That wasn’t on purpose, by the way. “You have the deer-in-the-headlights look,” the script reads. No, she didn’t, she looked cold-hearted. She’s not a likable character. Later on, we see that the story builds her up to not be a likable character, in order to make her fate palatable to the audience. But it’s clear that she wasn’t supposed to be a character you disliked right from the start. But she was.

Women of color were used in a way that I had hoped would speak more deliberately and expanded upon as to the cruel way black women are often subjugated by eurocentric beauty standards and used as background props. But no, the two black models were just mute background props. There was a scene where the models were all sitting, waiting for an audition. The one black model had to stand. There were two briefly panned over during the runway show. That was it for the black people.

The lights of her hotel won’t come on. She hears a rumbling. Frightened by it, she enlists the help of the motel owner, played by Keanu Reeves, and his assistant. He finds the lock won’t work for some unexplained reason, so he kicks the door down. It’s a mountain lion, or some kind of big cat. (Twilight Zone, anyone?)

Midway through, Jesse is chosen over Gigi to close the runway show. This is the part where her narcissism is on full-blossom and she realizes how beautiful she is and that she’s the center of the universe. It’s even complete with a vision of her kissing her reflection. The fashion director, after admonishing Gigi’s fake beauty and marveling at Jesse’s real beauty, says that “Beauty isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” She starts acting cold to Dean, this guy she’s dating. He asks, “why do you want to be like them?” Dean is pure-hearted dude that sticks by her even though he’s “not getting anything out of it.” She’s a pure virgin, after all. She says, “I don’t want to be like them. I want to be like me.”

So Dean’s out. Late in the night, there comes a guy attempting to break into motel rooms and torture women. She wakes up just in time to lock the door, as he moves onto the next room and tortures the woman in there. This prompts her to go to Ruby’s house. Not surprisingly, it turns out Ruby has the hots for her and tries to rape her. Being pure and beautiful, Jesse says no and forces her off. The next morning, she wakes up and of course looks at herself in the mirror, on which Ruby had drawn a big oval with a bunch of big x’s drawn on it. Behind her is this big stuffed leopard. She goes out to the pool and that’s where Ruby finds her. She goes back inside, where Gigi and Sarah are there to ambush her. All three of them kill her, eat her, and bathe in her blood. So here’s where I know they messed up, losing all sense of self, and any chance of saying anything worthy of any type of merit went out the window. Jesse didn’t die because of her narcissism. She only died because she trusted Ruby, who, as it was clearly hinted, hunts and eats young girls. In the beginning, Ruby’s reflection appears in an ominous red ambiance. She’s wearing a gaudy red tie. As a matter of fact, Jesse dies with her purity intact, never allowing Ruby to deflower her. The virgin, as we know, wins at the end of the horror movie. And, even though she died, she did win. She died in like the most ideal way possible for a narcissist. “Uglier women killed me because I’m too pretty/pure and/or they can’t have me.” In the final scene, Gigi and Sarah are shooting another scene, with Jesse in their bellies. The ritual worked for Sarah. After being overlooked as too old, she is now captivates and draws the attention of all. Gigi, on the other hand, falls ill. She cries, “I have to get her out of me,” then she stabs herself in the gut and dies. This just further illustrates my point that Gigi, the one who was considered a fake beauty for all of her plastic surgery, couldn’t handle Jesse inside her because she was unworthy of true beauty. The End.

So that brings me back to what I said at the very beginning: what was the point? Did they really spend two hours to make such a point, not in condemnation of a shallow way of living or thinking, but that it’s dangerous to have so much beauty that jealous women are going to want to kill you?

Somebody hand me the trash bucket.