Film Review: Her Private Hell

Her Private Hell
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Pillow Films, by NWR Originals
In Theaters 07.24.2026

There are artists who are revolutionary, artists who are visionary, artists who are misunderstood… and then there are those who just desperately want to be seen as all of those things. Nicolas Winding Refn’s new film, Her Private Hell, showcases a director who had become so self-consciously fixated on the safety net of in-your-face pretentiousness, the kind that keeps the emperors in the film industry working long after they’ve run out of anything to wear.  

Her Private Hell follows Elle (Sophie Thatcher, Heretic, Companion), a young woman in a futuristic city shrouded by a mysterious mist and threatened by a deadly, unseen force, who arrives at the Hotel Tower in search her estranged father, Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott, Ever After: A Cinderella Story, Mission: Impossible 2), a charismatic but deeply unreliable man with a troubled past. There she encounters Hunter (Kristine Froseth, Sharp Stick, How To Blow Up A Pipeline), a provocative influencer preparing to make a film with her, and her manipulative stepmother, Dominique (Havana Rose Liu, Tuner, Power Ballad), whose presence further complicates Elle’s search. Meanwhile, off in the netherworld of Plot B, the mysterious and driven Private K (Charles Melton, Riverdale, May December), an American soldier who carries a comic book called Candy Floss and may be from another era (it’s hard to know or care), is on a quest to rescue his kidnapped daughter from… some sort of thing. Probably the mist. Yes, let’s say it’s the mist, whatever the hell that is! As Elle and Private K’s circuitous yet very nearly inert paths converge, long-buried family secrets, supernatural forces and the boundaries between memory, dreams, and reality begin to unravel.

Refn is an undeniably talented filmmaker, and his 2011 action drama Drive remains a classic, the kind that feels so fresh and exciting that it instantly sets up high expectations for whatever its creator does next. One gets the feeling that Refn, whose previous works had a decidedly mixed reception, had no confidence in his own ability to make another film that would so effortlessly straddle the line between arthouse movie and mainstream popcorn flick and decided that his best gambit was to make movies that were so incomprehensible and psychedelic that critics and audiences would be afraid to say, “I don’t get it.” But by and large, they did exactly that, and Her Private Hell is just another buck naked emperor parading around town letting it all hang out. The production design is striking and strangely enchanting, giving the faint suggestion that Blade Runner, Jem and The Holograms, The Matrix, and Black Swan bought a black light and a lava lamp, dropped acid together and possibly had a baby, and there are times when Her Private Hell gets a surprising amount of milage out of casting a spell on the audiences with its arresting visuals, noirish atmosphere and Pino Donaggio’s majestically over-the-top musical score. Unfortunately, the “story,” which unfolds like the cannabis enhanced stream of consciousness of a 27-year-old hipster who firmly believes that everyone admires him for wearing his skinny jeans backwards with a sweater that clashes, doesn’t so much twist and turn as it twirls around in a circle and periodically throws up on itself. The lean 110-minute runtime makes it bearable, but the sluggish pacing reaches a point where it’s hard to take, and the whole film is a desperate need of a laxative and a juice cleanse.  

The talented and committed cast is trying their best and clearly taking the thin material very seriously, though I only occasionally got the impression that they truly understood what movie they were in. Everyone has a strong enough handle on their own characters to bring them to life, but each of them has at least one line delivery that feels like it should be followed by an apologetic aside of “whatever that’s supposed to mean.” Froseth is handed the most straightforward and fun character, and since Hunter is more content to be completely oblivious as long as she looks cool doing it, the performance is convincing and mildly humorous. The dramatic sequences between Liu and Thatcher, alternately fawning over each other and hating each other as they try to make sense of their relationship, become excruciating, despite Liu’s gallant efforts to hold them together. 

When it’s at its best, Her Private Hell has the same awkwardly earnest charm as an experimental and interpretive blackbox theater production put on by eager but clueless young students at a liberal arts college, and at its worst, it’s like watching a thousand circus clowns climb into a very tiny car that moves three feet and then falls apart. There’s a lot of effort going on, but it’s devoted to an unworthy vehicle. Please, Nicolas Winding Refn, get some of your old drive back.  —Patrick Gibbs

Read other film reviews by Patrick Gibbs:
Film Review: The Odyssey
Film Review: The Invite

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