Film Review: HER PRIVATE HELL (2026): New Film From the Director of DRIVE Needs Some Fuel in the Plot Department

Her Private Hell Review

Her Private Hell (2026) Film Review, a movie directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, written by Esti Giordani and Nicolas Winding Refn and starring Sophie Thatcher, Charles Melton, Havana Rose Liu, Dougray Scott, Shioli Kutsuna, Kristine Froseth, Diego Calva, Parker Sawyers, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Lola Corfixen, Mark Gosse, Kim Magnusson, Boy Ewald and David Hendil-Forssell.

David Lynch may have made a bad movie or two in his day, but nothing can prepare viewers of Her Private Hell for the unbearable ride through its creative world that it takes the audience on. It provides the viewer with fantastic sets and the neon lighting featured in the movie is phenomenally rendered all throughout the picture. It just feels that director Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive) forgot to bring the plot to the surface here and there’s virtually no character development brought to the table this time out.

Her Private Hell is ambitious in every way, yet it fails to establish its main character, Elle (Sophie Thatcher), as anything other than a pretty face in search of genuine meaning in her life. In fact, Her Private Hell, feels like a rough cut in which all the finalized scenes had not been added quite yet. Drive had a rough cut that made it out there on the virtual market and it didn’t gel the same way the final cut did. I remember one cut featured a bag of money while one didn’t at the conclusion. Little specific shots like that really do make the difference, believe it or not. Her Private Hell is almost all style and zero substance. It’s hard to imagine Neon could justify its very existence through what’s on-screen.

Yes, the cinematography is brilliant! This film features a woman sticking Elle for good luck, claiming a prick with a needle is good fortune. We follow through on this thought somewhat, yet the movie is also running in a million different directions at once like a comic book written by a nerd high on drugs, writing in a stream-of-consciousness fashion. All the performers in the new picture showed up and did their jobs, but the scriptwriters didn’t do theirs well enough.

Havana Rose Liu is one of our best and most active working character actresses, so it comes as a shock that her stepmother character, Dominique, is so flatly conceived. Liu is not at fault, except for taking this part without demanding that her character have a true arc that is earned by the logistics of the plot. Liu still proves to be solid as an actress, working with what little she had.

Liu is a small problem with the picture when compared to the actual storyline, itself, which features Charles Melton as Private K, a man desperately in search of his young daughter. Also showcased is Dougray Scott as Johnny Thunders, a man who plays a big part in the film when the movie wants him to, but, also, leaves him on the cutting room floor or absent for much of the movie.

Kristine Froseth, as Hunter, looks like she has come from another movie altogether. That assumption wouldn’t be far-off as Hunter meets Elle at the start of the movie as Hunter is around the vicinity of Elle’s place. Both characters hit it off in a peculiar way and then some. Women make up the majority of the main characters here and the men almost feel like an afterthought. They exist in a way that doesn’t do the characters of that sex justice and that may be the point, but still.

Two hands must be taken off of a vicious man in the picture. There is a guy called the Leatherman and this character is actually a pretty good conceit. The first lesson that should have been taught to the screenwriters, though, was to expand on him a bit more. Making him totally menacing, but not following through on development makes the movie suffer. This film could have worked really well as Lynch movies often did way back when. Her Private Hell comes up short in more ways than one, however.

David Lynch movies worked because Lynch was a cinematic genius. Although Nicolas Winding Refn made one nearly great film, Drive, he’s not working to his ability with Her Private Hell. This new film doesn’t have the requisite edge that drove Lynch movies like Blue Velvet home. Refn’s new movie offers surprises at every corner as there is a woman on a balcony who appears to be killed by a vicious person or entity at one point. However if we don’t like the main characters, it’s hard to pick up the shattered pieces and that’s exactly what is wrong with Her Private Hell.

Sophie Thatcher doesn’t, exactly, play her part in a disappointing fashion, but she’s given precious little to do here other than have close-ups of her face in the movie that don’t usually even hint at what’s going on deep in her mind. A movie like this would thrive on intriguing characterizations, but they’re missing here. Backrooms set the standard for original horror movies and Her Private Hell is lucky to even be mentioned in the same sentence as that masterpiece.

Charles Melton is a fantastic actor, but you wouldn’t know it from his merely adequate work in this film. Melton needs to work on more character-driven films as that’s where his talent lies. One may think Refn’s movie is meant to be a character-driven movie, but it plays like a film centered more on creating impressive images than anything else. For example, a scene with an overweight man taking his shirt off before dealing with a volatile situation is interesting, but is it truly necessary to advance the plot?

Set in a creative world of chaotic situations and vicious troubles, Her Private Hell, has the ingredients for greatness, but needs a polish in the writing department. It’s hard to guess what the motivations of certain characters are and the ending leaves a few loose ends. Her Private Hell gets points for its style, and Refn has a lot of talent, but the story needs to be reworked and re-imagined to fulfill its original promise of mystifying and intriguing audiences. This picture never possesses the solid characters that a film like this needs in order to succeed.

Rating: 5/10

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