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
Persona (1966 film) of a second and intended to be "subliminal". The sheep is from Luis Buñuel's 1929 "Un Chien Andalou", and the personification of Death was used in Bergman's 1949 film "Prison". Michaels linked the spider in the prologue with the "spider-god" in Bergman's 1961 "Through a Glass Darkly". Törnqvist said that the spider is visible under a microscope, indicating its use for study. When the boy reaches out to his mother, it is to shifting photographs of Ullmann and Andersson. In addition to the prologue, the story is interrupted by a midpoint celluloid break. Scenes creating a "strange" or "eerie" effect