12 Awesome Performances In Otherwise Awful 2016 Movies

To call The Neon Demon an awful film is perhaps unfair, but it’s certainly one of the year’s most polarizing movies as shown by its reception during its Cannes premiere where it was met with both a chorus of boos and a standing ovation. Not too surprising considering that controversial Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn is the mind behind The Neon Demon and the movie features scenes of cannibalism and necrophilia.

Set in the seedy underbelly of LA’s fashion industry, the film stars Elle Fanning as small town orphan girl turned lusted after fashion model Jesse who finds herself at the mercy of the predatory folk around her – jealous fellow models, stereotypically sleazy fashion photographers, Jena Malone’s necrophilia prone makeup artist and Keanu Reeves’ shady motel manager. The movie seems to set out to state the obvious – that the fashion industry is exploitative – but ends up confusedly being as voyeuristic as the industry it sets out to condemn, which didn’t sit well with many critics.

But even those who despised the film had to admit that Fanning’s turn as the naïve but narcissistic young Jesse who willingly offers herself up to exploitation elevated the film from being a purely tawdry, shocking for shock’s sake kind of movie.