That would be an innocuous enough story as a made-for-TV movie on Lifetime (but probably Freeform), but this is Refn here, whose films up until now have dealt almost uniformly with over-the-top masculinity and stomach-turning ultraviolence. What would he have to say about the experience of an image-conscious teen girl? Would a Refn film about fashion self-implode from its own stylishness? There was only one way to answer this question: see the movie, and then talk about it on the internet.

The film follows Jesse, played by Elle Fanning, a 16-year-old newcomer to Los Angeles who hopes to break into a career in modeling. Her youth and beauty prove irresistible to everyone she encounters — agents, photographers, fashion designers, a skeevy Keanu Reeves, a skeevy Jena Malone, and even a rogue mountain lion. She is declared an It Girl, much to the chagrin of two older former It Girls and her dopey "good guy" boyfriend. Jesse’s ruthless careerist side starts to come out, making her a target for everyone suffering in her shadow.

Emily Yoshida: There’s a kind of corny press release email that’s been going around with all Neon Demon-related materials lately, in which all the cast members answer the question "what is The Neon Demon?" Bella Heathcote, who plays the pettily-named LA model Gigi answered, "The industry and the city. It’s glossy and shiny but it will eat you alive." I now see what you did there, Bella!

Maybe it’s best for us to start out with our expectations going into this movie. The optimist in me wanted this to be a highlight of my 2016 moviegoing year. From the trailers, it appeared to have all my favorite things: Los Angeles, evil teens, the American Cement Building, and a huge debt to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Had it been coming to us from any other director (say, a female director!), I would have let my hype go completely unchecked, as opposed to the cautious sniffing out I found myself doing around every new interview and review. But this is Nicholas Winding Refn at the wheel here (or NWR, as his Saint-Laurent-esque monogram dubs him,) a notorious idiot savant, who, like Ryan Gosling’s pretty cipher in Drive, can stumble into greatness when he’s not making words. I had little doubt the imagery would be swoony and campy in equal measure. Its commentary on the shallowness of the "Los Angeles modeling scene" I had less high hopes for.

My biggest complaint about this movie ended up having nothing to do with its purported "shallowness," which every critic seems to be bending over backwards to point out as if to distance themselves from the fact they’re even writing about it. It was that it ended just as it was getting good! But I know a lot of people have complained that it drags on too long, so I’m curious as to what you guys think. Also, is it possible that NWR could be our foremost bad director of nonetheless interesting films?

Kaitlyn Tiffany: The trailer reminded me of a lot of things that I like as well — Spring Breakers, Vanderpump Rules, Black Swan, Twin Peaks — but more than that it seemed like it would be a conversation movie. I love a good internet conversation! Love to follow a backlash cycle! I had visions of a New Inquiry free supplement. I also had high hopes that this movie was going to be transparently about the life and times of Gigi Hadid, which turned out not to be the case, even though there was a character named Gigi. In hindsight, that was sort of an irrational hope as I don’t think Refn would ever admit to knowing who Gigi Hadid is. Also, I googled it, and it’s loosely based on the life and times of Elizabeth Bathory, a countess who killed hundreds of virgins in the late 1500s and bathed in their blood! That’s a huge spoiler.

My biggest complaint with this movie was the dialogue, which was incredibly painful to listen to both because it took everyone 40 seconds or more to respond to a direct question and because people said really inane things like, "It’s the middle of winter and you’re the sun," and "I used to yell at the moon, CAN YOU SEE ME?" and "Which are you, food or sex?" So I, too, enjoyed the last 30 minutes of the film the most, both because crazy shit started happening and because people stopped talking.

My favorite thing about The Neon Demon was that the creepy photographer named Jack was played by the same guy who played Chuck Bass’ creepy uncle named Jack on Gossip Girl, and he performed both parts exactly the same way. I really can’t wait for Lizzie to jump in here, because I can still see her lil’ jaw twitching with anger as we left the theater.

EY: That WAS Jack Bass! I definitely had the thought "that looks like Jack Bass" during the body painting scene. IMDB says the photographer’s name was Jack. If this movie takes place in the GG universe that would actually make a lot of sense.

Lizzie Plaugic: Well I guess Kaitlyn has already given away my ultimate reaction to this movie, which was: it was bad. I went in pretty hopeful that The Neon Demon was going to be campy and dark and weird, and it was, which is why I’m still kind of baffled it was also so, so boring. It took me a while to get to that final "bad" conclusion, by the way — mostly because the movie was a slow 117 minutes. While I, like both of you, thought the film didn’t really start to get interesting until the last twenty minutes, I have to admit I only realized that in hindsight, with 24 hours between me and the excruciatingly slow dialogue, fashion world clichés (sleazy bald photographers wearing all black!), and masturbatory self-seriousness (or was it a parody?!). When I was actually living through the last twenty minutes of the movie, the start of each new scene felt like torture — maybe the kind where a single drop of water hits your forehead every thirty seconds and you can’t brush it away. Watching The Neon Demon was like hanging out with a stranger on cocaine on a Monday night: fucking exhausting.

Like hanging out with a stranger on cocaine on a Monday

It’s difficult to pinpoint the most disappointing part of this movie, but the most jarring was its insistence that Jesse (Elle Fanning) possessed some kind of rare perfection that caused everyone in her immediate vicinity to inhale sharply or try to murder her. Because even within the Neon Demon world, Jesse was simple and dull. She was given almost no interiority, and no backstory other than a pair of dead (or vaguely absent) parents. She is a porcelain-skinned orphan virgin and that’s all I know. Maybe her captivating aura stemmed from her virginity, which, given how this movie treated sex, is not unthinkable.

EY: Elle Fanning has made a career out of being an avatar for purity and youth that older, more interesting characters can react irrationally to. It’ll be interesting to see how long that can last. It feels like there was a version of this movie where she flexed way more of her sociopathic Snapchat-obsessed teen demon muscles, or got a little more Sprang Break before her comeuppance, but for whatever reason, Refn and Fanning didn’t take the character that far. Even without a backstory, seeing Jesse turn truly dark would have given her character a little more to chew on. I don’t know what there was to lose by going full tilt — subtlety?

I don’t think it’s because Fanning couldn’t carry that kind of darkness; there are flashes of it here and there that are really chilling, especially as delivered in her dull, soft voice. I actually think Refn couldn’t fully embrace his own concept — that this pure, beautiful girl could also be a vessel for unbridled vanity, narcissism, and malice. He had to give those traits to the older, more hardened model characters. And Abbey Lee is especially great in vengeance mode, but that’s a way less interesting scenario, and makes Jesse the helpless innocent when the movie’s been arguing she’s anything but.