'Her Private Hell' Review: When Neon, Gore and Sex Become Boring
By Dan Bremner - September 25, 2026
Nicolas Winding Refn’s first feature in ten years, Her Private Hell, follows a troubled young woman searching for her father in a neon metropolis and an American G.I. trying to pull his daughter out of something that might be Hell. I think?
After the dismal streaming series Too Old to Die Young and Copenhagen Cowboy, I wanted Refn back in cinemas. Drive, Bronson and The Neon Demon are films I love, and I will still defend Only God Forgives to an extent. This one confirms he has lost the plot. Inspired by his own experience of “dying for 25 minutes,” the film is self-indulgent, empty and so vapid it tips into self-parody. It is a checklist of Refn visuals and themes he has already exhausted, stretched to a tedious extreme.
Refn is no stranger to glacial pacing, it's part of his style, but there's nothing here to justify it. Static shots linger, slow-motion piles up, and narrative drive barely exists. At roughly 110 minutes it feels considerably longer. Even viewers patient with arthouse rhythms and Refn's advocates will find it an endurance test.
Style completely overtakes substance. The neon, fog, glitter and saturated colours are consistently striking, yet they exist for their own sake. The film prioritises fetishistic surfaces of skin, light or texture over character, story or feeling. It often resembles an avant-garde perfume advert that somehow secured a theatrical release.
I would say the narrative is thin and frequently incoherent, but that would imply there was a narrative. Parallel threads involving Sophie Thatcher’s young actress, family and sexual tensions, a mysterious mist, a figure called the Leatherman, and Charles Melton’s G.I. in post-war Japan drift in and out without accumulating meaning. Dream logic is used as a free pass for aimlessness. The film resists interpretation in a way that feels lazy rather than provocative.
Sophie Thatcher and Charles Melton give wooden, affectless performances that border on the alien. Prolonged blank stares and sparsely delivered, often nonsensical lines leave both actors looking stranded. This is almost certainly the register Refn demanded, the same mannequin-like remoteness he has favoured for years rather than any lack of ability on their part. The result is still hollow. No one on screen generates attachment or even basic curiosity.
Despite marketing that hints at sci-fi, horror and violence, tension is almost entirely absent. Bloody moments and body-horror teases appear, then dissolve into more blank slow stares. The only sustained horror is the experience of waiting for something to happen, which it rarely does. When those moments do arrive, it just feels weird for weirdness sake rather than anything it's actually built towards or earned.
Refn recycles his own motifs without development. Problematic fathers and daughters, neon fetishism, sexualised violence, glitter, eye trauma. All of it returns from The Neon Demon and Only God Forgives like greatest-hits karaoke. After a decade away, the film feels like creative stagnation dressed up as pure aesthetic. To call this disappointing would be an understatement.
The tone is knowingly pretentious and openly alienating in that way Refn can nail and make work. Meta winks such as “This movie’s gonna be hell, her private hell” acknowledge the excess without justifying it. Supporting roles vanish, the score by Pino Donaggio leans into pastiche, and the CG-heavy mist world feels lifeless despite its surface opulence. The whole project registers as personal catharsis that was never shaped into a film for anyone else.
The visuals and production design remain the sole genuine strengths. Cinematographer Magnus Nordenhof Jønck delivers hypnotic neon-drenched images, symmetrical compositions and a vivid command of colour and fog. Sets, costumes and the overall “nightclub in hell” aesthetic are lavish and cohesive. Fans of pure Refn surface appeal will find things to admire. Beauty alone cannot carry a film this hollow.
Her Private Hell is the most disappointing film of the year. After ten years away from films, Nicolas Winding Refn returns with the most self-indulgent, empty and hollow film of his career. The visuals are bold and vibrant, but it's a pretentious slog that derails itself at every turn. An exhaustingly dull arthouse horror that manages to make neon, gore and sex boring. Bravo, Refn.
'Her Private Hell' is out now in cinemas, following its release on September 25, 2026.
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Dan Bremner
Writer
Dan is a writer from Guildford with a love for all things genre, schlocky, and thoroughly '80s, and a part-time philanthropist.
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