"Her Private Hell": Resurrection of an Enigma
“Her Private Hell,” 2026, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn ★★★ ½ ☆ Before seeing Her Private Hell it might be difficult to imagine what a contemporary version of an Italian giallo might look like. It seems impossible to pull off the sleazy, gelatinous style of vulgar auteurs like Mario Bava and Dario Argento; audiences expect more dialogue, more emotional stakes, more nuance. Even American deviants like Brian De Palma are less palatable to many than they used to be – the homogenization of genre and industry has largely disallowed their approach. Enter Nicolas Winding Refn in his first foray into feature filmmaking since his controversial 2016 film The Neon Demon . After delving into television over the past decade with Too Old to Die Young and Copenhagen Cowboy , the 55-year-old was creatively and literally reawakened when he was clinically dead for 25 minutes in 2023. “I suddenly realised I could start over again,” he said at a Cannes press conference, where Her Private Hell ...