To say that The Neon Demon is highly anticipated is something of an understatement. The new feature from Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn is about to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, and in order to whet the appetite of the audience, three clips from the film have been released.
The film stars Elle Fanning, Keanu Reeves, Christina Hendricks, Jena Malone, Abbey Lee and Bela Heathcote and, as this advance footage indicates, The Neon Demon is set to take the Nicolas Winding Refn visual style to the next level.
Discussing his new film with The Hollywood Reporter, the director spoke of his inspirations and motivations for this horror-thriller.
“I really believe there is a 16-year-old girl inside of every man, and I wanted to make The Neon Demon about the 16-year-old girl inside of me. And that is what got me obsessive moving towards to wanting to make this film. And there were some practicalities involved, like my wife would only move to L.A.. So I had to figure out a story set in L.A. I had done some really endurable fashion campaigns, so I was very interested in that world. And actually I’ve been trying to make a horror film for many years and had written down many ideas. I took them out and I could see a pattern that I could use. And that became The Neon Demon. In the end I wanted to make a teenage horror film.”
It’s clear that, in releasing these promotional clips, the darker side of The Neon Demon film is being kept under wraps. For the time being, though, we can enjoy the arresting visuals, and what appears to be an excellent performance from Jena Malone.
