The Neon Demon of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali's groundbreaking surrealist short "Un Chien Andalou" – that all you can do is howl or cheer." Tirdad Derakhshani, writing for "The Philadelphia Inquirer", called Refn a "bold visionary artist... able to revel in the culture of instant gratification while also subjecting it to critique", giving the film three and a half out of four stars and calling it a "brutal masterpiece". Rene Rodriguez of "The Miami Herald" wrote positively of the film's visuals and experimental filmmaking, writing, "To complain that "The Neon Demon" lacks substance or that it doesn't have anything to say about
The Spiral Staircase (1946 film) romance," the film has been noted by contemporary critics for its prominent Gothic horror elements. It has also been cited as one of numerous progenitors to the slasher film, specifically due to its female-centric cast and point-of-view cinematography deployed during scenes in which the killer stalks his victims. Film scholar Amy Golden notes several significant visual allusions in the film, such as Luis Buñuel's "Un chien andalou" (1929) and Maya Deren's "Meshes of the Afternoon" (1943). Golden cites the film as a "quintessential example of 1940s horror." Writer Denis Grunes in 2007 suggested the film is "in fact a masked