12 Movies From 2016 That Were Unfairly Hated

Well known as one of contemporary cinema’s most polarizing directors, Nicolas Winding Refn’s latest offering and his first foray into horror The Neon Demon received both boos and a standing ovation at its Cannes premiere. Perhaps not too surprising considering that his last film Only God Forgives got exactly the same response at Cannes three years earlier. Much of the criticism leveraged at the seductively stylish psychological horror has been that it fetishizes the very thing it sets out to condemn – the glittering but exploitative world of fashion.

It’s true that the film, which focuses on Elle Fanning’s naïve but narcissistic young model as she breaks into the LA fashion scene, does seem to promote or at least be part and parcel of what it also seeks to critique. The movie’s male gaze lingers and sexualises its subjects, its dialogue often feels vapid and when it descends into its more depraved scenes (lesbian necrophilia, Fanning being forced to deep-throat a knife and cannibalism included) it is hard to see The Neon Demon as a takedown of the fashion industry.

But perhaps this is exactly Winding Refn’s intention. By deliberately being as shallow and vapid as the industry it critiques, it works better as a satire of a culture that values beauty and youth above all else. Even if that seems too kind to Winding Refn, the fact that the Daily Mail was so outraged by The Neon Demon’s depravity that they called for the British Board of Film Classification to ban it must lend the movie at least some street cred.