At cinemas nationwide now

After the zany grittiness of the Pusher trilogy, the unpredictability and showmanship of Bronson and the 80s atmospherica of Drive, Winding Refn has crafted himself a reputation of a maverick filmmaker hell-bent on pushing the boundaries of cinema. His latest effort, The Neon Demon, sets its sights more ambitiously than ever before – but sadly, falls well short of his best work.

The plot hinges on 16-year-old Jesse, an aspiring model with no family to speak of who moves to Los Angeles in an attempt to break into the cutthroat world of glamour and fashion. Before long, her innocent aesthetic and natural beauty have turned the heads of some big names in the industry – photographers and fellow models alike. The intentions of the latter are dubious, to say the least.

While Jesse’s struggle for success and the bitchiness of her rivals provide the main impetus for the movie, don’t expect a grown-up version of Mean Girls. In theme and style, it’s probably more akin to Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, while Winding Refn has also clearly absorbed the inscrutability of David Lynch, the shocking violence of Quentin Tarantino and the penchant for jabbing at taboos favoured by directors like Lars von Trier (necrophilia and onscreen urination are just some of the goodies on offer in store). His influences are as broad and easily identifiable as the brushstrokes on a Van Gogh sunflower.

All of these aspects aren’t what make the film a failure – it’s rather the poor execution of each which lets it down. The cinematography and symbolism is at times stunning, but all too often heavy-handed and overblown, with shots regularly running on for far longer than necessary. The Mulholland Drive–like mysteries seem poorly thought-out (even confusing poor old Keanu Reeves, whose acting in a minor role is dreadful even by his standards); the violence is impactive without being insightful; the taboos included apparently only in order to shock, but not to stimulate.

For all that, there is something to be said for what the director is trying to achieve. As a commentary on the self-consuming, all-consuming and narcissistic nature of modelling, The Neon Demon probably achieves what it set out to do. If Winding Refn is hoping to highlight the industry as an empty, vacuous, self-indulgent piece of shit by making an empty, vacuous, self-indulgent piece of shit film, he’s succeeded completely. But the end result is still a piece of shit, and all the metaphors in the world won’t make it more palatable.