Eddie here. Tonight I'm reviewing The Neon Demon, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn (director of 2011's Drive and Only God Forgives), starring Elle Fanning, Keanu Reeves, and Jena Malone. The Neon Demon is a 2016 psychological thriller where a 16 year old girl moves to los Angeles, California to become a model and gets involved in more than what she bargains for when she meets a make-up designer, Ruby (Jena Malone). She quickly learns the dark side of the modeling business as well as being a 16 year old girl living on her own in the rough parts of Los Angeles. When I saw the trailer for this film last year, I wanted to see this film but at the same time, I felt like it wasn't going to be much of my taste. So I gave it a shot and I have to say, I ended up enjoying this film. The performances from every cast member were outstanding, especially Elle Fanning and Keanu Reeves. I don't think I've ever seen a mean, violent , and villian-ish Keanu Reeves before, but I sure would love to see him do it more often because his small role was one of my favorite parts of this film. This has some of the best stunning cinematography / visuals I've seen of 2016 and the score in this film is the absolute best of 2016 as well. It's also extremely brutal, very bloody, and it has a lot of nudity which I enjoyed, lol. If you want to know what best describes this film, I'd have to say it's like putting A Clockwork Orange and Black Swan mixed with the Stranger Things score. As for my cons, I'd have to say it has a huge problem with character resolutions. There are a lot of characters in this film, especially Keanu Reeves, that literally go away without any kind of resolution which pissed me off. I also thought the first 30 minutes dragged a lot with its dialogue, which started to bore me. Other than that, surprisingly I ended up liking this film a lot and I do recommend it. I'm going to give The Neon Demon a 7/10. Speaking of Keanu Reeves, our review of John Wick Chapter 2 will be up soon. Be sure to check out mine and Justin's thoughts on it when it's up. See you on my next review.
Eddie Williams