Her Private Hell
★
Danish auteur Nicolas Winding Refn is one of those directors where you either enjoy or get bored by their work. I’ve yet to see his Pusher trilogy, but my favorite film by NWR was his 2011 claim to international fame: Drive. Sadly, it’s his peak. Both Only God Forgives and The Neon Demon were visually interesting but shallow slogs that took too long to get to their points. Somehow in the 10 years since Neon Demon, NWR has worsened.
Her Private Hell is the latest feature film by NWR, a blend of genres from sci-fi thriller to giallo horror. It stars Sophie Thatcher, Charles Melton, Havana Rose Liu, Kristine Froseth, Dougray Scott, Diego Calva and Hidetoshi Nishijima. It had its premiere earlier this year at Cannes and will be released in theaters next Friday.
The film takes place in a futuristic city where a great mist has engulfed it. Lamenting the absence of her father (Scott), actress Elle Thunders (Thatcher) is stuck with her young stepmother Dominique (Liu) and bubbly co-star Hunter (Froseth) in a luxurious hotel suite. Meanwhile, the enigmatic Private K (Melton) searches for his daughter in Hell, portrayed as a foggy domain where the ghostly leather-clad killer named Leatherman lurks.
The biggest sin this film commits is this: what is it actually about? Say what you will about Only God Forgives and Neon Demon, but at least they crafted commentary about forgiveness and beauty (respectively). What does Her Private Hell have to offer? It’s supposed to explore father-daughter relationships and family issues, but the storytelling is so vague that these themes are insisted rather than naturally felt. There are moments that connect thematically, but none of them are fully developed nor enough to make that father-daughter theme stick. Elle and K are barely connected other than a leather jacket that somehow comes into her possession. There’s a large gap between the first time we see Leatherman kill a woman and the next time when he kills a major character, so much so that he’s basically forgettable until the climax.
Not only does the story barely progress, but the characters don’t really develop either. There is some movement between Elle and Dominique as they have a strenuous relationship that slowly starts to ease (over an hour into the film, mind you), but it regresses just as quickly as it progresses. Hunter’s arc is a flat line paired with dialogue that can be taken as seriously as that in Megalopolis. K doesn’t meaningfully change as a Driver-esque vigilante and his guilt for losing his daughter is told rather than shown. Instead of developing, NWR is more concerned with fetishizing. To be frank, these characters look immensely attractive in interesting make-up and NWR’s signature neon haze (which there is surprisingly little of), but pull that veneer off and there’s nothing underneath. It’s no wonder Elle claims “This movie’s gonna be hell.”
Another thing that came off as annoying was the score. This may resonate more as a high point for some, but the whole operatic score that composer Pino Donaggio creates hardly matches the futuristic atmosphere of the film. If anything, the music makes each moment more melodramatic than they actually are. Already when we are introduced to the main trio of women, there are rising orchestral melodies that convey the grandiose of the scenery instead of what’s happening within it. Only later in the film (particularly in a nightclub involving Calva’s character) does the score indulge in more electronic synth music that is more appropriate.
In the end, whether or not you will enjoy Her Private Hell is mostly dependent on how much you resonate with NWR’s previous work, especially after Drive. But even then, would this film be worth it regardless? I think not.
