The Neon Demon

***The Neon Demon*** is a 2016 American psychological horror film

## Synopsis

When aspiring model Jesse moves to Los Angeles, her youth and vitality are devoured by a group of beauty-obsessed women who will take any means necessary to get what she has.

## Plot

Sixteen-year-old aspiring model Jesse has just moved from small-town Georgia to Los Angeles. Her first photoshoot is done by Dean. She meets makeup artist Ruby, who introduces fellow older models Sarah and Gigi. The three women are intrigued by Jesse's natural beauty, as well as curious about her sexual proclivities. Jesse feigns experience in the latter.

Jesse gets signed by Roberta Hoffman, the owner of a modelling agency, who tells her to pretend she is nineteen and refers her to a test shoot with a notable photographer, Jack McCarther. Jesse goes on a date with Dean, but keeps his advances at bay. She returns to her motel room to find it ransacked and occupied by a mountain lion. The unsavory manager, Hank, demands that she pay for the damages. Jesse goes to the photo shoot with Jack, who covers her naked body in gold paint. The shoot is successful, and Gigi and Sarah begin envying Jesse's youth, while Ruby is fascinated with her.

Jesse goes to a casting call for fashion designer Robert Sarno, where Sarah is also present. He pays no attention to Sarah but is entranced by Jesse. A distraught Sarah asks her how it feels to be the one everyone admires. Jesse admits, "It's everything." Sarah lunges toward her, and Jesse accidentally cuts her hand on glass. Sarah immediately sucks the blood from Jesse's hand. Jesse rushes back to her motel and faints, hallucinating strange images. Dean arrives, pays Hank for the damage to her room, and treats Jesse's wound. Hank reveals a sexually predatory streak and tries to attract Dean's attention to a 13-year-old runaway girl whose room may be next to Jesse's.

At Sarno's fashion show, Gigi tells Jesse about all the cosmetic surgery she has had done, and expresses disbelief that Jesse has not used casting couches to achieve success. As Jesse is closing the show, she sees a vision of the glowing triangle she saw before in her hallucination. After the show, a visibly-changed Jesse goes out with Dean to a bar. There, Sarno denigrates women who have cosmetic surgery, using a humiliated Gigi as an example. In contrast, he praises Jesse's natural looks. Dean challenges this view and tries to convince Jesse to leave, but she rejects him, now displaying a narcissistic new persona.

Jesse has a nightmare of Hank forcing her to sexually swallow a knife. She wakes up in time to hear someone fidgeting with her door lock. She quickly turns the lock, but is left to listen as the intruder breaks into the next room and assaults the female occupant. Terrified, she calls Ruby, who tells her to come over. Ruby tries to initiate sex with her, but Jesse rejects her, revealing herself to be a virgin. Upset, Ruby draws a diagram on her mirror and leaves for her second job as a makeup artist at a morgue. There, she pleasures herself with a female corpse.

Ruby returns home and finds Jesse now unabashed in her narcissism. Jesse is attacked by Gigi and Sarah. Ruby pushes Jesse into a huge empty swimming pool, killing her. The three women approach her with knives. Ruby is then seen in a bath full of Jesse's blood; Sarah and Gigi are washing blood off in the shower. Later, Ruby is revealed to have occult tattoos. She lies in Jesse's unmarked grave as part of a ritual that culminates in her living room, when a torrent of blood gushes from her genitals.

The next day, Sarah drives Gigi to one of Jack's photoshoots. As Gigi and another model named Annie gets their makeup done, Sarah quietly hears Annie talking to her makeup artist about her friend who nonchalantly states to Annie scheduled to be in the shoot that she once ate a girl who messed up her job, disturbing Gigi as she realizes what they've done. The other model, Annie, doesn't think twice and laughs as she believes it's a joke. Jack wanders to the living room in the middle of the shoot and is suddenly enthralled with Sarah and asks her to replace the other model. Sarah nods and smiles with pride as Jack fires Annie on the spot. In the midst of the shoot, Gigi feels ill and leaves. Sarah watches Gigi vomit up one of Jesse's eyeballs. She screams with regret, "I need to get her out of me", and stabs her own stomach with a pair of scissors, cutting open her abdomen. Sarah watches Gigi die, eats the regurgitated eyeball, disassociated tears falling from her eyes as she walks off into the sunset.