You may hate 'Her Private Hell,' but you probably won't forget it

If a movie was ever worth watching for its component parts, "Her Private Hell" is the one.

Nicolas Winding Refn's first feature in more than a decade bears all the grotesque violence, gratuitous misbehavior and somnambulistic acting we expect from the notorious Danish director. But while he's also developed a reputation as a fashion-forward film stylist with "Drive" (2011), "Only God Forgives" (2013) and "The Neon Demon" (2016), this work operates on a whole other plane of formal virtuosity.

More Information

"Her Private Hell": Science fiction horror thriller. Starring Sophie Thatcher, Charles Melton and Havana Rose Liu. Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. (R. 109 minutes.) In theaters Friday, July 24.

Refn orchestrates it all in his usual alienating, love-it-or-go-home manner. But his collaborators deserve attention no matter what you think of their boss.

The film revels in imaginative indulgence. Magnus Nordenhof Jønck's saturated-color cinematography makes room for obscuring shadows throughout its frames-within-frames. Production designer Gitte Malling's luxe sets too easily turn into nightmare alleys - in a good way. The fetishy ingenuity of Jane Marshall Whittaker's costumes is matched by Louise Bruun's makeup. From too-tight dresses to stick-on crystal tears, it's all a sultry tribute to self-harm. 

Brian De Palma's favorite composer, 84-year-old Pino Donaggio, even came out of retirement to drop a score of industrial-strength orchestral dread.

Tatsuro Koike's fight choreography is also exceptional, rough yet strangely intimate. And whoever made the mist that permeates many scenes and characters' consciousness deserves an award.

It's as sensory, and sensual, as movies get. Some might say that comes at the expense of telling a coherent story. That overstates the case, but it's true that Refn and co-screenwriter Esti Giordani aren't super-concerned with clarity. They're having too much fun with the wilder elements.

Sophie Thatcher, the thinking person's scream queen from "Heretic" (2024) and "Companion" (2025), goes for jaded vulnerability as protagonist Elle. In some fog-banked, insistently artificial metropolis, she's an actor starring in a cheesy, all-female film-within-the-film outer space thriller produced by her emotionally withholding father (Dougray Scott). He's gone and married Elle's one-time best friend Dominique (Havana Rose Liu, from the recent "Power Ballad" and "Tuner"), which increasingly wears on his daughter's already fragile self-esteem.

In addition, there's a naïve yet ambitious ingenue, Hunter (Kristine Froseth), who asks unnerving questions. The production's kabuki-like wardrobe ladies make oracular pronouncements while poking Elle with pins. Oh, and offstage, there's a brutal serial killer, Leatherman, who comes out of the mist to rip lovely young things apart.

As if that's not enough - and we should know nothing ever is for Refn - the movie keeps dream-cutting from Elle's private hell to what seems like a whole other story.

Charles Melton ("Riverdale," this season of "Beef") deploys both his professional-model looks and surprising martial arts skills as Private K. He's an American soldier stationed in a night-shrouded Japan, searching for his young daughter whom Leatherman abducted. Hidetoshi Nishijima, star of the achingly poignant "Drive My Car" (2021), plays the stolid detective following K's blood-soaked rampage through the Tokyo underworld.

Or is it actually Satan's realm? Refn sort of brings the two disparate narratives together by the end, suggesting that damnation isn't just Elle's psychic fate but an emotional purgatory we're all fated to share.

Refn created two TV series with similar vibes, "Too Old to Die Young" (2019) and "Copenhagen Cowboy" (2022), between his last two features. Despite all the activity, however, he claims the new film is a kind of resurrection act after almost dying from a leaking heart. Something about being there for his youngest daughter also inspired it, though it's not too uncharitable to view this as an aging enfant terrible's sexist fever dream.

But for all his provocation and posing, there's a properly raised Danish boy hidden in Refn's twisted soul. "Her Private Hell" can be viewed as a bent reinterpretation of Hans Christian Andersen's "Little Match Girl," and not just because there's a lot of cigarette lighting going on. 

Like David Lynch, Refn risks self-parody to transport us from life's sorrows through beautiful visions. If you're lucky, its flaws won't spoil the movie's capacity to take you away.

Bob Strauss is a freelance writer. 

Subscribe

Read this story on sfchronicle.com