Nicolas Winding Refn‘s (Drive) latest film, The Neon Demon is one gigantic metaphor of the Fashion industry. All looks, mood, and attitude that is a starkly polarizing journey.

Sixteen year old Jesse (Elle Fanning) moves to Los Angeles in search of a modeling career. With little on her side but innocence and good looks, she stays at a rundown motel in Pasadena while making the rounds in Los Angeles. Soon enough Jesse is discovered and pulled into the sordid world of high fashion modeling, where everyone she surpasses becomes envious of her success. We’ve seen this story a million times before but it’s how the story is told that sets this film apart.

The film opens, starkly on the familiar image, Jesse sprawled out on a couch in haute couture, blood draping from her throat. A sinister looking young man methodically snaps pictures. The surreal photo shoot sets up the idea that the fashion world is a grissly, blood thirsty beast.

We next meet Ruby (Jena Malone in the film’s most impressive performance) a makeup artist that lingers and invites Jesse to meet her peers at a party. It’s these initial scenes that set up the pacing for the film. Long pauses between mono-sylabbic dialogue that comes out stilted and odd. It is here in this scene that you are either with the film or you are not. Story, pacing, and even dialogue take a back seat to visuals, mood, and that elusive it factor.

You know where this film is headed but that is not the point. Jesse faces dangers around every corner including two very nasty models, Gigi (Bella Heathcote) and Sarah (Abbey Lee) who befriend her in the hopes of getting her intrinsic IT factor. “What’s it feel like,” Gigi asks, “To walk into the room and it’s like the middle of winter, you’re the sun?” “It’s everything.” Jesse answers. As Jesse makes her way up the fashion runway, she is also pursued and protected by her brooding hotel manager Hank (Keanu Reeves in a surprisingly good performance).

The story is bland and predictable, the dialogue is insipid, but my god the film is stunning to look at and absorb. Natasha Braier‘s austere photography is gasp-inducing with the uber saturated tones that recall Argento’s Susperia. Every single shot in this film is perfect. Cliff Martinez‘s exquisite  electro-pulse score permeates the film like the thumping music at a runway show. It is the best electronic score since Daft Punk’s Tron Legacy.

The Neon Demon is one gigantic expose of the fashion world with writer director Nicolas Winding Refn sacrificing nearly two hours of our time to put mood, looks, and charisma over plot much like the fashion industry often sacrifices aesthetics over practicality. To love this film you not only have to understand the joke, and to watch it play out in its own glacial pace. If Stanley Kubrick was genetically merged with David Lynch then had a love child with Terrance Mallick, you would get The Neon Demon. This is an exquisitely shot, aesthetically perfect film that couldn’t care less what you thought of its long as you can’t stop looking. The Neon Demon will demand that you love it or hate it and it doesn’t care what the reaction is. It just wants you to react.

The Neon Demon opens today nationwide.