Her Private Hell: Nicholas Winding Refn’s Beautifully Vacuous Nightmare

Her Private Hell: Nicholas Winding Refn’s Beautifully Vacuous Nightmare

Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn
Written by Nicholas Winding Refn
Starring Sophie Thatcher, Harry Melton, and Havana Rose Liu
Released July 24, 2026

A Movie That Seems to Hate Its Audience

The painful thing about Her Private Hell, the first new feature from director Nicholas Winding Refn since his brilliant The Neon Demon, is how much he seems to hate the audience. He’s made a gloriously weird movie that seems to demand deconstruction.

And yet, at the same time, it may be intended to have no meaning at all.

Refn has spoken with disdain of those who search movies for deeper meaning. Thus, he’s made a movie that invites deconstruction while mocking anyone who might attempt to deconstruct it.

As an act of trolling, it’s genius. As an act of cinema, it’s frustrating and a bit sad.

I want to sit here and praise aspects of NWR’s work, but those aspects aren’t enough to overcome how frustrating the movie is. That’s compounded by the potential fact that Refn has achieved exactly what he intended: a movie that frustrates with purpose.

A Story That May or May Not Exist

Sophie Thatcher stars in Her Private Hell. She may or may not be an actress named Elle who lives and seethes in the shadow of her father, Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott). Dad is recently married to Elle’s closest friend, Dominique, and the wedge this has created in their relationship seems irreparable.

Johnny’s idea to get them to like each other again is a movie they will star in together with a newcomer, Hunter, played by Kristen Froseth. Elle appears to be toying with Hunter, flirting with her and inviting her to share her bed, all while she cold-shoulders Dominique.

A lot of what I have written there is inferred, based on context clues. In reality, there isn’t much of a coherent story at play in Her Private Hell. The film splits its narrative into two stories that don’t feel connected until they are.

Or perhaps they never really are.

Johnny Thunders warns the young women, while dropping in on them for just a moment, about the Leather Man, a dangerous urban legend of a killer with no face and diamond-studded gloves that he wears in order to cut up victims and tear open their chests.

He seeks women who are without their fathers and seemingly more vulnerable due to Daddy not being around.

Does this story coincide with a flashback story? Maybe. Or is it a parallel story? The film is deeply unclear on this point.

Lost in Refn’s Beautiful Nightmare

Harry Melton plays an American G.I. named Kay who is living in Tokyo. Kay’s young daughter is believed to be a victim of the Leather Man, and Kay now roams the late-night streets of Tokyo seeking revenge on the Leather Man while hoping he can be reunited with his daughter.

Melton is a magnetic presence, handsome and effortlessly charismatic. Sadly, Melton is left adrift by his writer-director. He does what he can with this character, but Melton is fighting against the tide of a director at odds with himself, crafting a narrative that he doesn’t seem to have any investment in.

Indeed, most of the cast of Her Private Hell has a beauty and magnetism that stands out. As much as Nicholas Winding Refn is interested in trolling audiences and critics, he doesn’t humiliate his cast to do this.

Were the cast members aware of his effort at trolling? Hard to say, but their performances appear committed and match the intensity of Refn’s often gorgeous visuals.

If only he had any intention of capitalizing on their commitment.

Beautifully Empty

Sadly, Nicholas Winding Refn seems to have made it clear that he doesn’t want people reading into Her Private Hell. He has made a beautifully vacuous film.

It’s an empty spectacle of production design, lighting, and staging that excuses a lack of substance by saying there was never going to be anything of substance to begin with.

And maybe that’s the joke.

Maybe Refn is sitting somewhere laughing at critics like me who are desperately trying to find the point, the metaphor, the hidden meaning or the grand statement lurking beneath all those beautiful images.

If that’s what you want to do, Mr. Winding Refn, cool.

I’m just not sure why I—or anyone else—should want to watch that.

But congratulations on accomplishing whatever this was, I guess.