PLOT: In a future world enveloped by a strange mist, a young actress (Sophie Thatcher) stars in a sci-fi movie for her enigmatic father (Dougray Scott), whose wife (Havana Rose Liu) is her former lover. Meanwhile, an American soldier (Charles Melton) searches the neon-lit streets for his missing daughter, who has been abducted by the mysterious “Leather Man.”
REVIEW: Her Private Hell is Nicolas Winding Refn’s first feature since The Neon Demon, ending a ten-year absence from the silver screen, with his focus having shifted recently to streaming, doing Too Old to Die Young for Amazon and Copenhagen Cowboy for Netflix. Those who watched his increasingly surreal, dream-like series, hoping his feature return would be more in line with his earlier work, should look elsewhere. Her Private Hell feels more like his streaming work than his features, with it making even The Neon Demon and Only God Forgives look relatively straightforward in comparison.
Indeed, the only way I can really sum up Her Private Hell is by calling it beautiful tedium. Refn’s aesthetic is in full swing here, but there’s utterly no substance, making his return to film a chore to sit through. Sophie Thatcher plays the marginal lead, although no one is developed enough to really call them that. She’s Elle, an actress in the future whose father, Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott), has summoned her to star in a new film, which seems to be a deliberately cheesy riff on Barbarella. He quickly leaves his daughter and a new actress hanger-on, Hunter (Kristine Froseth), in the company of his new wife, Havana Rose Liu’s Dominique, who was once Elle’s best friend and lover. Together, the three go on a kind of debaucherous tour of the strange city’s underworld, all the while a serial killer named the Leather Man, whose secret weapons are his diamond-encrusted fists, roams the streets killing women. At the same time, Charles Melton plays Private K, a soldier killing his way through the underworld in his search for the Leather Man.
That description probably makes Her Private Hell sound a lot more straightforward than it is, with the plot secondary to Refn’s desire to create a vibe, feeling like a late-era David Lynch film, though much colder and lacking substance. Thatcher seems to be having fun as Elle grows increasingly unhinged, but the stylized dialogue both she and Liu are saddled with is hard to pull off, with them even communicating at one point by literally barking at each other in “wolf speak.” Froseth fares a bit better, as she’s playing a character who’s supposed to be vacuous and dumb, which at least gives her a chance to be funny, as Thatcher and Liu have little more to do than smolder.
Meanwhile, in a part of the movie that feels wholly detached from the rest, Charles Melton has some action sequences as he fights Yakuza, though whether they actually know anything about the Leather Man or why he’s fighting them is never made clear. Melton certainly looks cool, with his action-hero style, but the fight sequences are flat and perfunctory, more of an afterthought as Refn builds a vibe.
His influences run rampant throughout. Some will say the future noir city looks Blade Runner-ish, but to me the movie seemed more like a pastiche of Mario Bava and Dario Argento, with a heavy dose of early Brian De Palma thrown in for good measure, although done in a non-narrative style. The score by Pino Donaggio is terrific and does the lion’s share of the work holding the movie together, but after about half an hour, when it becomes clear that the entire film is just going to be an experimental exercise in style, aesthetics, and Refn’s various fetishes, it becomes a chore to watch.
Now, here’s the catch. Her Private Hell probably deserves to be seen in a certain mindset — if you catch my drift. It’s perfectly possible that Her Private Hell, when it comes out, becomes a stoner classic, with it the kind of movie that may well be improved upon if you happen to be high while watching it. In my twenties, this might have exactly been my jam. But if you’re looking for anything more than just a cool-looking movie, you won’t get it from Her Private Hell. Even his most adventurous fans may find this too tedious to stick with.
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