"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 was met with wildly mixed reactions and a number of walkouts. “I had this desire to go back and make movies again like I’ve never made movies before.” While Her Private Hell is far from a magnum opus (if such a thing is even possible for an artist as scattershot and versatile as Refn) it is undeniably unique and crafted with the daring, sometimes reckless attitude that a brush with death will give you. Infusing his work with the earnest perversion and fallibility of Bava’s Blood and Black Lace, as well as the bright pinks and blues that have increasingly become a staple of his style since 2011’s Drive, Refn has constructed a film that’s hard to hate even when it’s absurd and ascetic. 


The basics of the “story” in Her Private Hell are strung around the connection between Elle (Sophie Thatcher) and Private K (Charles Melton). Two lost souls in a mist-drenched city that’s more than reminiscent of Blade Runner’s Los Angeles, they’re eventually drawn together by the mysterious “Leatherman”, a masked serial killer methodically hunting young women and girls before ripping open their ribcages in diamond-studded gloves. Before they unite, Elle and Private K are intercut within their own stories. Elle is the daughter of Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott), and is shooting a campy sci-fi movie (Refn presses the Bava button again here, making clear homage to Planet of the Vampires) with obnoxiously enthusiastic starlet Hunter (Kristine Froseth) and her best friend-turned-stepmother Dominique (Havana Rose Liu). Meanwhile, mourning the death of his daughter, Private K battles the Yakuza in high-concept action sequences, brutally taking down child traffickers and dirty cops.


If this all sounds disorganized and downright weird, it’s because it is. It only gets weirder from there with the addition of Nico (Diego Calva) and significantly more blood, sexual violence, and implied puppy play. But the strangest part of the film maybe isn’t even what happens in it; Refn directs his actors like stiff puppets and shoots their bodies like objects to be ogled, lingering on midriff and biceps while lines are delivered as if in a first read-through of an Arthur Miller play. It makes the film almost completely impenetrable, but its tone and dreamy logic, as well as a luxuriant score by Pino Donaggio (Blow Out, Body Double) also grant the audience the permission to surrender to the atmosphere of its world. Then the viewer can accept Refn’s images as they are: an impossibly tall, neon-lit hotel cloaked in fog; a child’s dress shop with flashing police cars parked outside; a surreal movie set dotted with enormous, glowing gemstones. Every image, however disconnected and off-putting, is highly evocative.


Her Private Hell is one of the more difficult movies to describe from this year and an even harder one to sell, which is exactly why audiences should go see it. Pointing to any one of Refn’s genre influences (giallo, cyberpunk, samurai) would be a misrepresentation because of the way it combines and distorts its DNA. It’s a fascinating progression both for Refn and pastiche at large, something that can’t be said about many movies at all. Her Private Hell opened this past weekend and is in theaters right now. 



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