Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, I enjoyed his 2011 movie ‘Drive’. Sure some of the slow scenes and long pauses and deep and meaningful looks between Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan gave it a hint of pretentiousness at times, but that was easily outweighed by the stylisation, imagery and soundtrack. So Refn must have figured he could take those qualities up a notch or two when he wrote and directed the Neon Demon.
Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) was the highest paid screen writer in Hollywood in the late 1940s before he fell foul of the House UnAmerican Activities Commission. In an atmosphere of cold war paranoia senate hearings were held in which suspected communist sympathisers were grilled and asked to betray others, on pain of prison.
It is 1979, and in small town America a group of young adolescents spend their summer making a Super 8 short film to submit for a competition. As they shoot a scene in their zombie film at the local train station, they witness a real train crash, and discover a large number of curious metallic objects in the wreckage. Amidst the chaos they are warned by an injured high school teacher at the scene that all is not what it seems, and to keep silent about the crash.