The last time this happened to me was at 2019’s Serenity. About an hour or so into the movie, I realized what I was watching was some hot garbage and started really laughing at the dialogue the characters were saying. Immediately I got shushed by another moviegoer, convinced she was watching the next great drama. Her Private Hell is going to do the same thing to people: on vibes alone this is going to seem like one of the most dazzling incredible movies of the year. And then the characters open their mouths…
Actress Elle (Sophie Thatcher) is in Her Private Hell. That hell being her father movie star Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott) leaving her and her stepmom Dominique (Havana Rose Liu) alone in a neo-noir metropolis. Not ideal either, because young movie star Hunter (Kristine Froseth) showed up on Elle’s doorstep (they’re in a movie together) with no hotel reservation. Oh and maybe more importantly, a killer called the leather man who’s kidnapped young girls like Elle, Hunter, or Private K’s (Charles Melton) daughter shows up when “the mist” oozes into the city, and it’s getting awfully cloudy.
I look forward to the day Her Private Hell is shown on mute in dive bars. That’s the best way to experience Nicholas Winding Refn’s latest film. It’s luscious beginning to end. The mist gives the movie a 1920s futuristic detective story feel, with Sophie Thatcher, Charles Melton and the cast narrating around eerie hazy neon. It’s beautiful and haunting, and never lets go of that. The interiors are just as hauntingly beautiful: ornate lavish but also gigantic spaces to make our characters feel out of time. Refn gives us a silly palate cleanser with a weird 1960s Star Trek style movie set to help reset everyone occasionally before he’s onto his next magic location. But the best sequence of the movie is in the weirdest club imaginable, using pulsating music and expertly cut use of imagery and darkness to make us feel the characters have entered lust incarnate, filled with a mixture of desire, comeliness, and sin Refn shoots as if he’s protecting the audience from seeing the unholiness except for small doses. If I’m a director, I’d hire Refn, cinematographer Magnus Nordenhof Jønck, and editor Matthew Newman immediately if you think your film is missing style: they’ll make sure your film pulsates with energy. Just looking the movie’s a 5 star masterpiece.
But when Nicholas Winding Refn insists he wants to write your movie too, run as far away as possible. I haven’t seen a movie this poorly written in years. The dialogue is a toxic mixture of misogyny, discrimination, and condescension. Every other word from all the female characters is daddy, and gets grosser and inevitably funnier every time they utter it, culminating literally in one of the funniest scenes of the year that I don’t know if Refn thinks is funny. Asian women are used as pseudo harbingers of fate, forced to make weird moments and talk in ways a white person thinks makes them special…and hot. This movie’s so horny but like 12 year old boys has no way to express it other than stick its tongue out, take off a shirt, and shout awoooga at any smokeshow walking near them. Not to mention a villian named “The Leatherman” in fetish serial killer chic. None of this is the actors faults, who really try to commit to Refn’s “vision”: when Havana Rose Liu, Sophie Thatcher, and Kristine Froseth are laid out like Rose in Titanic and just start barking like dogs saying they’re in a wolf pack having never done anything like that before, what response is there other than pure cackling laughter at how stupid and awful this screenplay is. The only logical score for Her Private Hell based on a dialogue is 0, failing in everyway imaginable.
So that leave us at 2.5 stars, much like The Room. In fact, I cannot WAIT for midnight showings of this movie. This is the arthouse equivalent of soft core pornography for friendless virgins who only care about movies. And the leather cosplay is going to be hysterical. I wonder what the spoon gag of her private hell is going to be. Probably something “daddy” related.