Looks like Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon won’t feature an all-female cast after all, as Variety reports that Keanu Reeves and Christina Hendricks have joined the cast of the presumably highly stylized and extremely violent horror flick. The duo will join 16-year-old lead Elle Fanning and Max Max: Fury Road’s Abbey Lee, cast as the ringleader of a group of “vicious” and “maniacal” models. (Are there any other kind?) Jena Malone and Dark Shadows’ Bella Heathcoate have also reportedly joined the cast.
Hendricks’ and Reeves’ roles haven’t been set as of yet, but Hendricks previously appeared in Drive and Reeves previously appeared in a bunch of movies where he carried a samurai sword, something that is right up Refn’s alley. The plot of the movie is also somewhat ambiguous; Deadline printed, then quickly removed, details in its story about Lee’s casting, but /Film managed to get the description before it was gone. It does contain potential spoilers, so consider yourself warned:
“In Neon Demon, [Lee] plays a cool ringleader that other girls want to follow. Envious, emotionally unstable and a tad delusional, she shows her true maniacal colors in the end. After first creeping Jesse out by sucking the blood out of her wound, she ends up killing and later eating Jesse to absorb her virginal youth and beauty.”
Compare this to Refn’s own description of the film: “One morning I woke and realized I was both surrounded and dominated by women. Strangely, a sudden urge was planted in me to make a horror film about vicious beauty.” Either way, it’s probably going to look great.