In 2007, I got up early one autumn morning and took the train to Worksop in Nottinghamshire. My reading material for the journey was the Nicolas Winding Refn and Brock Norman Brock screenplay for the film Bronson, about the infamous pugilist and jailbird, which was eventually released in 2008. I had been invited to visit the set of the film during its production, and I was able to witness a scene in which its star, Tom Hardy, convincingly duffed up two goons in a barn as part of an illegal bare-knuckle boxing bout. My primary memory of that enjoyable afternoon is tethered to the boyish enthusiasm that exuded from a puffer jacket-sporting Refn, who was, from my perspective, making this film with the mindset that it was going to be one of the greatest ever made. Speaking to him briefly, he was like a slick, Scandinavian carnival barker, excitedly selling me into all the juicy details of the Bronson mythos while cataloguing his numerous cinematic influences (Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange being the main touchstone).
Almost two decades later, and Refn is back with a wild new showcase of ambient brutality, and to see it is to be submerged in a confluence of those same arcane enthusiasms and one man’s primal desire to do the thing he loves to do. And the set-square framing, the dystopic underworld, the punk fashionistas and the society seeped in cyberpunk violence once again call to mind Kubrick’s gaudy opus. Her Private Hell is a phantasmagoria bathed in neon-strip lighting, a resonant howl of Oedipal confusion that is set to one of the most gorgeous film scores of the 21st century – care of Italian maestro, Pino Donaggio. Although it shares its tonal and aesthetic DNA with Refn’s previous feature, 2016’s fashion world freak-out, The Neon Demon, this new film takes a more abstruse narrative detour through its themes of female oppression, death anxiety and the orgasmic potential of extreme physical pain. All of which is the apparent product of Refn’s own recent brush with mortality.
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The Private Hell to which the title refers is one nestled in the diseased mind of Elle (Sophie Thatcher), a hard-bitten celebrity, model and movie actor who is suddenly forced to come to terms with her own cultural obsolescence. Her father is a rat named Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott), who perv-dicks around in front of her while, damsel-like, she yells the word “Daddy!” She is also sickened by the throngs of young wannabes who latch on to her opulent coattails, most notably the aptly named Hunter, played by Kristine Froseth. Everything we see in the film can be read as a symbolist pop-cultural projection by this troubled young starlet, from the anonymous futuro-cityscape that looks like a yassified version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (compliment!), which rises up from the new romantic product of 10,000 fog machines, to the hyperviolent, poseur-ish angels and demons who stalk a crystalline outland that exists in the recesses of Refn’s own dream archive.
In addressing the question of why Her Private Hell takes the shape it does, let us consider Phie Ambo’s 2006 documentary Gambler, in which we see Refn and his wife, Liv Corfixen, in a frantic bind as they are on the verge of bankruptcy following the commercial failure of his second feature, Bleeder, and his third Fear X. To secure some revenue (and to ensure a steady flow of cash to Refn’s personal movie poster framer, who is a little like an avuncular drug dealer), Refn agrees to write some sequels to his hit debut, Pusher, and churns out two scripts in double time. In doing so, he manages to keep the wolf from the door and the films he makes are both very good, arguably even better than the first one. You get the sense from seeing Refn write conventional narratives, forming archetype characters and building simple dramatic conflict come very easily to him, and it also explains why he has now almost entirely dispensed with that approach to his art. He is currently deep into the post-narrative phase of his career, leaning more heavily on atmosphere, composition, environment and the chaotic nature of the human inner being. It’s a much more pure and classical and highfalutin form of cinematic expression, driven by primal images and evocative sounds, and offering the audience an invite to something completely idiosyncratic and, dare I say it, dangerous.
There’s a double meaning to the title, as alongside its reading as a private hell, it could also refer to the film’s other main protagonist, Charles Melton’s Private K. With dark glasses, a perma-scowl and some detailed martial arts training, K heads on his own bizarre redemptive path, administering the beat-down to hordes of yakuza minions in high style while mysteriously gravitating towards Elle. Could K be Elle’s saviour, the elixir for her many earthly woes? Melton’s finely nuanced performance tamps down traditional emotion and character in favour of physically enshrining a kind of glowing cinematic spirit – a sad-eyed human battering ram in search of salvation.
The final piece of the puzzle arrives in the form of Refn’s most brilliant and vivid nightmare creation – a monosyllabic, spectre-like serial killer known as the Leatherman. With red glowing peepers and diamond-encrusted leather gloves, he symbolises the easy come, easy go nature of celebrity, harvesting young women by sneaking up on them and tearing open their chests as though they’re big Christmas presents. The Leatherman is also Refn’s homage to classic Italian horror thrillers known as giallos, films in which narrative logic always takes a backseat to splenetic editing and graphic images that are primed to sear themselves on your memory – for better and for worse. The film essentially charts how Elle, Private K and the Leatherman eventually meet, resulting in a breathtaking netherworld stand-off that allows us to ride the swirling, swelling peaks of Donaggio’s score.
When Her Private Hell premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, it was met with, shall we say, bemusement by those in the press corps. And it’s entirely understandable that this film would be agressively offputting to some, as Refn isn’t out to give anyone a rockin’ good time. Following the popular success of 2011’s Drive, Refn could so easily have allowed himself to be subsumed by the Hollywood machine, puff up his movie-poster budget and, like he did with his Pusher sequels, just give the people what they want. Yet, instead he has chosen the more radical and alienating route, one which led him to re-cast Drive star Ryan Gosling, not as a slick hero, but as a henpecked weakling in his difficult follow-up, Only God Forgives. Refn’s ultra-principled approach to his craft does not involve fluffing the fandom – rather it aims to furtively draw them into his quixotic cinephile playground, and sometimes leave them stranded. Her Private Hell is 100 per cent the product of the man who once stood in a Nottinghamshire field with a tight budget and a big dream, setting out to make The Greatest Movie Ever Made.
