So I guess female vanity is some kind of dark magic and you see the innocent virgin attracted to its glowing allure. As she is drawn into it she meets a coven of witches: a passover, a wannabe and a sorceress supreme, who all covet what she has. The passover wants to kill her, the wannabe is jealous of her and the sorceress supreme who occasionally turns into a wildcat attempts to seduce her, but, awake to the power within her, the innocent virgin instead opens herself to her destiny as the vessel of 'The Neon Demon'. The coven then kills her and eats her flesh to gain for themselves the powers of 'The Neon Demon'. Which is female vanity or the male gaze or some nebulous cloud of similar tropes referenced in terms of fashion modelling.
The bad laughs and eye-rolling material comes on early where our innocent virgin hits all those on-the-nose beats about falling from innocence in the big city. Speaking of 'beats', long expanses of the film seem like the cinematography was only there to provide a light show behind Carpenter-esque synth jamming. An example of this was a heavily abstracted scene where our innocent virgin is finally possessed by 'The Neon Demon'. I guess 'abstract' is the word for it. 'Stoner planetarium laser show' would also suffice. Within the narrative continuity, this possession is meant to have occurred when the innocent virgin is given the star slot in a famous designer's runway show. One is left with the suspicion that the filmmakers couldn't actually show this happen in the context of an actual runway show because they didn't have a clear idea of the reality of a runway show. The scenes bookending the sequence feature some of the most self-serious and unintentionally silly dialogue in the film.
After her possession, the film takes a steep dive into very silly territory. Our innocent virgin is presumably transformed now that she has accepted 'Teh Power', but Elle Fanning has none of the startling aesthetic presence attributed to her character either before or after. We're just meant to recognize her unique and startling attractiveness because it's written into the dialogue. By the foot of the second act, audience credulity on this point is strained.
There's a scene of the sorceress making out with a corpse, a ten minute sequence of the witches washing the innocent virgin's blood off their bodies in slo-mo under blue light while the sorceress, also covered in blood and glitter, gazes on and one of the witches heaves for ten minutes, in another ten-minute sequence of a character doing one thing, before throwing up an eyeball. There's more goofy stuff after that. There are a lot of party-bulb and blacklight shots which go on for way to long. A lot of bad dialogue. It's not a good movie.
The bad laughs and eye-rolling material comes on early where our innocent virgin hits all those on-the-nose beats about falling from innocence in the big city. Speaking of 'beats', long expanses of the film seem like the cinematography was only there to provide a light show behind Carpenter-esque synth jamming. An example of this was a heavily abstracted scene where our innocent virgin is finally possessed by 'The Neon Demon'. I guess 'abstract' is the word for it. 'Stoner planetarium laser show' would also suffice. Within the narrative continuity, this possession is meant to have occurred when the innocent virgin is given the star slot in a famous designer's runway show. One is left with the suspicion that the filmmakers couldn't actually show this happen in the context of an actual runway show because they didn't have a clear idea of the reality of a runway show. The scenes bookending the sequence feature some of the most self-serious and unintentionally silly dialogue in the film.
After her possession, the film takes a steep dive into very silly territory. Our innocent virgin is presumably transformed now that she has accepted 'Teh Power', but Elle Fanning has none of the startling aesthetic presence attributed to her character either before or after. We're just meant to recognize her unique and startling attractiveness because it's written into the dialogue. By the foot of the second act, audience credulity on this point is strained.
There's a scene of the sorceress making out with a corpse, a ten minute sequence of the witches washing the innocent virgin's blood off their bodies in slo-mo under blue light while the sorceress, also covered in blood and glitter, gazes on and one of the witches heaves for ten minutes, in another ten-minute sequence of a character doing one thing, before throwing up an eyeball. There's more goofy stuff after that. There are a lot of party-bulb and blacklight shots which go on for way to long. A lot of bad dialogue. It's not a good movie.