What actually happens
A cougar in the motel room
Jesse is 16, her parents are dead, and she has just left a small town in Georgia for Los Angeles. A photographer named Dean does her first shoot. A makeup artist named Ruby introduces her to two older models, Gigi and Sarah, who ask about her sex life, and Jesse lies and pretends to have one. Roberta Hoffman, who runs a modeling agency, signs her and tells her to say she is nineteen. Roberta sends her to a test shoot with a well-known photographer named Jack McCarther. That evening Dean takes her out and seems to like her as a person. When she gets back to her motel, a cougar has come in through the open balcony door and wrecked the room. Hank, the motel's owner, makes her pay for the damage, and Dean covers it.
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Gold paint and a cut hand
At the shoot, McCarther has Jesse undress and rubs gold paint over her body. It goes well, and Gigi and Sarah are jealous of how young she is. At a casting call for designer Robert Sarno, he ignores Sarah and is entranced by Jesse. Sarah asks Jesse how it feels to be admired, Jesse says it feels like everything, and Sarah lunges at her. Jesse cuts her hand on broken glass, and Sarah sucks the blood off it. Jesse goes back to the motel and faints. At Sarno's show she closes the runway while seeing triangles and her own reflection, and afterward Sarno tells Dean that beauty is worth more than anything inside a person. Dean hates the conversation and tries to leave with Jesse, but she has taken on a cold, vain new attitude and refuses.
A bad night at the motel
That night Jesse dreams that Hank forces a knife into her mouth. She wakes to someone working the lock on her door, bolts it, and listens as the intruder forces open the room beside hers, where a 13-year-old girl is staying. The movie has already hinted at Hank's interest in the girl. Terrified, Jesse calls Ruby, who invites her over. Ruby makes advances, Jesse says no and admits she is a virgin, and Ruby tries to force herself on her anyway until Jesse pushes her away. Ruby then goes to her second job as a morgue cosmetologist and pleasures herself with a female corpse.
The empty pool
Ruby goes home and finds Jesse with Gigi and Sarah, and all three women turn on her. They chase her through the house until Ruby shoves her into the deep end of an empty pool. This is the scene people dread, and it comes near the end: the three women cut Jesse up with knives, eat parts of her and bathe in her blood. It is graphic, and it is the end of Jesse's story. Afterward Ruby half-heartedly washes out the pool and lies down in Jesse's unmarked grave. That night, naked at home in the moonlight, a flood of blood gushes from her.
The ending, explained
The next day Gigi and Sarah go to one of Jack's shoots. Jack suddenly becomes fascinated with Sarah, and fires another model named Annie. Midway through the shoot, Gigi runs off set, sick, and vomits up one of Jesse's eyeballs. Sarah watches. One of them screams that she needs to get Jesse out of her and stabs herself with scissors, opening her stomach. Sarah watches Gigi die, then eats the eyeball and goes back to the shoot.
The post-credits ruling
There is a scene during the end credits, in which someone in Sarah's jacket crosses the Mojave Desert by herself. The camera never shows her face.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: fine, no dog dies.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is The Neon Demon scary?
The Neon Demon is a 6 out of 10. It has no real jump scares, but it has disturbing images and sudden scenes, and its worst violence is graphic and arrives near the end.
How does The Neon Demon end?
Gigi, Sarah and Ruby kill Jesse and eat parts of her. The next day Gigi throws up one of Jesse's eyeballs on a shoot, one of them stabs herself with scissors, Gigi dies, and Sarah eats the eyeball.
Does the dog die in The Neon Demon?
No dog dies in The Neon Demon. A cougar wrecks Jesse's motel room early on, and it is not harmed.
Is there a post-credits scene in The Neon Demon?
Yes. The Neon Demon has a scene during the end credits in which someone in Sarah's jacket crosses the Mojave Desert by herself, and her face is never shown.
What happens to Jesse in The Neon Demon?
In The Neon Demon, Ruby, Gigi and Sarah kill Jesse. Gigi and Sarah envy her youth, and Ruby has just been rejected by her. They cut her up, eat parts of her and bathe in her blood, and Jesse is buried in an unmarked grave.
