Her Private Hell: Refn’s futuristic fever dream returns
Her Private Hell, Nicolas Winding Refn’s first theatrical feature since 2016’s The Neon Demon, arrives as a foggy futuristic genre mash-up. The New York Times frames it as a mannered, oversaturated spoof, while Refn pitches a dopamine, social-media-style thrill ahead of its July 24 opening.
Key Takeaways
- Her Private Hell is Refn’s first theatrical feature since The Neon Demon (2016), rated R and running 1 hour 49 minutes.
- The New York Times calls the Refn–Esti Giordani plot a laughable jamboree of horror, murder mystery, and psychodrama.
- Sophie Thatcher stars as Elle in a foggy futuristic “dreamscape,” opposite Charles Melton’s G.I. hunting a lost daughter.
- Refn told The Film Stage he shaped the film like a social-media “scroll”—a contained, moment-to-moment experience.
- Theatrical release is set for Friday, July 24, after a mixed-hostile Cannes debut.
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What is Her Private Hell actually about?
According to The New York Times review, Her Private Hell unfolds in a foggy, futuristic city the press notes dub a “pulsating dreamscape.” Elle (Sophie Thatcher) is a young starlet shooting cheesy sci-fi in a luxurious hotel suite, distracted by family chaos.
Her onetime best friend Dominique (Havana Rose Liu) has married Elle’s father, movie magnate Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott). Parallel to that soap-opera tension, the film cuts to post–World War II Tokyo, where American G.I. Private Kay (Charles Melton) hunts a daughter he believes was spirited off to Hell.
A monster called the Leatherman also prowls for daughters, ripping victims apart with diamond-encrusted gloves. The Times notes characters spout crackpot non sequiturs—“I am a victim of the mist”—in a world of extreme artificiality.
Why does the New York Times say to lock up your daughters?
The review’s “Lock Up Your Daughters” framing tracks the film’s fixation on endangered young women: Kay’s missing child, the Leatherman’s prey, and Elle’s uneasy orbit of predatory fathers and stepmoms. Psychosexual themes and lurid violence, the Times argues, remain Refn’s recurring turn-ons.
Critically, the paper finds the plot so laughable and the performances so stylized that the movie plays as an oversaturated surreal spoof—perhaps of Refn himself. Pino Donaggio’s lush score is called the film’s lifeline, nodding to Argento and De Palma collaborations.
How does Refn describe making Her Private Hell?
In a Film Stage interview, Refn said two ideas fused: “Private K going to hell” and a young woman entering an artificial city. Co-writing with Esti Giordani, he later treated Private K as Elle’s wished-for father figure rather than a purely parallel track.
After long-form streaming work (Too Old to Die Young, Copenhagen Cowboy), he wanted a containable “dopamine, moment-to-moment” feature closer to social media than television—what he calls a social-media narrative. The Film Stage notes the Cannes reception was mixed-hostile; theaters get the film Friday, July 24.
Whether you buy the Times’ spoof verdict or Refn’s scroll fantasy, Her Private Hell remains a polarizing sci-fi-horror spectacle built for audiences who like their futurism fetishized, fogged, and unapologetically artificial.