Her Private Hell, 2026.
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn.
Starring Sophie Thatcher, Charles Melton, Havana Rose Liu, Dougray Scott, Kristine Froseth, Shioli Kutsuna, Aoi Yamada, Diego Calva, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Lola Corfixen, Boy Ewald, Jason Hendil-Forssell, Parker Sawyers, and Mark David Gosse.
SYNOPSIS:
When a mysterious mist engulfs a futuristic metropolis, unleashing a deadly and elusive entity, a troubled young woman searches for her father. Her quest collides with an American GI on a harrowing odyssey to rescue his daughter from Hell.
There are two competing, inevitably converging plots in Nicolas Winding Refn’s stylishly hollow and abstractly aimless but occasionally pleasantly gruesome and too aesthetically interesting to outright dismiss, Her Private Hell, which marks the filmmaker’s return to feature-length filmmaking after ten years. The central one takes place in a towering hotel (aptly called Tower Hotel), in which dedicated-to-her-craft nepo-baby actress Elle (Sophie Thatcher) has arrived in preparation for shooting a sci-fi movie (briefly seen as something more resembling an intentionally rocky attempt at Star Trek than the neon-drenched futuristic cyberpunk setting the characters inhabit), greeted in the lobby by her vain up-and-coming co-star Hunter (Kristine Froseth) more concerned with attaining fame than putting out quality art.
After retreating to Elle’s skyrise suite, they are joined by ex-girlfriend Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), who is surprisingly revealed to now be her stepmom despite also being relatively young. It turns out that Elle’s father, Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott), was once (or still is, as with a lot about this film, it’s not entirely clear) a prominent industry filmmaker who now has a predilection toward sleeping with the younger women who either star or have starred in his works, referring to them as his daughters. Normally, a review would say something like “cue daddy issues drama”, but that would only be partially true here, as Nicolas Winding Refn loves to drag out the purpose of all this without even necessarily teasing anything compelling. Yes, it eventually becomes catty psychosexual camp while going to some eye-widening extreme lengths involving violence and sex, although far too late, even if those final 15 minutes depict something much more worthwhile.
Nicolas Winding Refn (writing the screenplay alongside Esti Giordani) has been open that the very existence of Her Private Hell was spurred by a flirt with death (he was pronounced dead for roughly 20 minutes following a heart attack, which would go on to be a key trait for a character he voiced in Hideo Kojima’s brilliantly weird Death Stranding, superlatives the filmmaker routinely strives to achieve while also occasionally falling short; mileage will vary from something like the more audience friendly crime-thriller Drive to the slow-burn hypnotically disturbing pleasures of The Neon Demon, to the all-out bore that is Only God Forgives). Mentioning all of this is to make the point that this critic could be considered something of an apologist for the auteur, yet there are times when his brand of vibes simply do not work. This is one of those cases.
Apparently, Nicolas Winding Refn is a father, and this narrative is his way of processing, well, A LOT about that in tandem with the filmmaking industry. As soon as the sleazy Johnny Thunders is introduced, he begins telling a tale that the emergence of a thick fog outside this neon metropolis (which, for some inexplicable reason, is littered with humongous crystal shards that, if nothing else, makes the production design more impressive) has also brought forth a Giallo-inspired killer (Jason Hendil-Forssell) decked out in leather, jewelry, and gloves with an almost mythologically tragic past now doomed to wander around the world ripping apart women. Elle witnesses one of these murders at one point, with one character, a couple of scenes later, remarking that she is oddly unfazed by it, because that’s the kind of movie this is: one where characters exist in a surreal state far from normal human reactions and emotions.
That isn’t inherently a problem, but it is typically less irritating when a narrative gives viewers something to ponder. Instead, the scenes between these characters mostly amount to Dominique trying to mend a distant family, with Elle mostly rejecting those efforts. Later on, another sleazy character (played by Diego Calva) is introduced who has nothing to do but serve as a pawn in their rift, which is much less interesting than it might sound on paper.
Elsewhere, a much more fascinating B-plot unfolds on the ground level of this futuristic metropolis, where Private K (a brooding Charles Melton, perfectly suited to playing these types of roles Ryan Gosling tackled in the filmmaker’s previous works) functions as a mirror to serial killer Leatherman, also equipped in plenty of leather (at one point putting on a jacket that, when photographed on him at a certain angle, draws visual comparisons to Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator), endlessly searching for his missing daughter. It’s a mostly dialogue-free quest that takes him through several brawls against Japanese gangsters in what feels like a sprawl across purgatory with no reason for hope in sight. There isn’t a whole lot of story to it (or at least the one that makes sense by the ending), but Charles Melton makes for a solid action star, demonstrating more layers as an actor expanding his range. When Her Private Hell is primarily focused on watching him stab or bust heads, there is some momentum and drive to be found.
Despite the hypnotic pull expected from a Nicolas Winding Refn film, Her Private Hell often feels as if it’s stuck in a pit of molasses. Each character speaks slowly as if to match that dreamlike, hazy energy, yet is unable to make it work because they are consistently let down by the material giving them nothing to do. It’s as if the filmmakers are hoping the quirkily dazzling costume design and the noteworthy score by Giallo staple Pino Donaggio somehow do most of the heavy lifting. What meaning there is here is far too personal and vague to grasp, all within a film that doesn’t realize some of its promised unhinged theatrics until its gloriously gross and weird third act.
There are reasons that a storytelling pioneer like Hideo Kojima would reach out to Nicolas Winding Refn for a role in his similarly strange, dense video games. Those reasons are largely missing from Her Private Hell. As someone who will always root for the filmmaker, here’s hoping he one day rekindles that oddball magic.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder
