OVERVIEW
Set in a futuristic metropolis where night never lifts, a young girl, Hunter (Kristine Froseth), arrives at a high-rise to meet Elle (Sophie Thatcher), a young actress preparing to shoot a sci-fi production for her father and living there with her stepmother, Dominique (Havana Rose Liu). Meanwhile, a killer called the Leather Man hunts for young women. Across the same streets, an American soldier known only as Private K (Charles Melton) pushes through the mist looking for his own missing daughter.
BACKGROUND
After winning Best Director at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival for Drive, Nicolas Winding Refn spent the next decade dismantling the very sensibilities that film had attracted. Each subsequent project receded further from narrative, trading tight construction for mood and atmosphere. Likely on the residual goodwill of his Cannes win, the two features that followed, Only God Forgives in 2013 and The Neon Demon in 2016, were programmed in the festival’s official competition. Both were booed, and Refn retreated into streaming. He collaborated with Amazon and Netflix, made a BBC children’s series along the way, and finally returned to feature filmmaking after a near-death experience he framed as the start of a new chapter. Cannes received him more modestly, programming the film in the Out of Competition section. Not a good sign.
THE REVIEW
Refn’s claim of reinvention is demonstrably false. Her Private Hell follows precisely the trend seen throughout his filmography, in which each project has less plot than the last, and setting “the mood” becomes his sole preoccupation. Refn’s intent is clear from the first frames, as clear as day, or in this case, as lurid as night. Shots of the city play as Blade Runner crossed with Coppola’s Megalopolis, establishing a grand, eerie atmosphere, and the purple, blue, and pink tones that will dominate the rest of the film arrive immediately. Hunter (Kristine Froseth) walks into the building and introduces herself in what looks like a more futuristic version of the lobby from this year’s wretched They Will Kill You.
In these opening scenes, we are introduced to the film’s characters, not that it matters. Hunter is an influencer-type celebrity preoccupied with what people think of her. Elle (Sophie Thatcher) is a famous young actress about to star in her father’s sci-fi production. Dominique (Havana Rose Liu) hovers as Elle’s stepmother and former best friend. At first, the film seems positioned to explore the dynamic between the three, “don’t let the numbers measure you,” Dominique tells Hunter, yet soon it opens a side plot as Elle watches a young girl get killed in a building across the street. Sometime later, the film cuts to Private K (Charles Melton), drifting through the streets in search of his missing daughter, who has been taken by a killer called The Leather Man, a villain from a story Elle’s father had earlier told her. Diego Calva also appears as a figure who further strains the relationship between Elle and Dominique.
If it sounds convoluted, it is because it definitely is. Refn remains uninterested in making the story cohere. Setups dissolve before they pay off, and what does happen arrives without any preparation (or sense). The film opens as if it were Hunter’s story, then treats her as a waste of space, with other characters even saying they find her cute but uninteresting. A growing conflict between Elle and Dominique surfaces, initially presented in friendly terms. An early scene has them communicating by barking at each other (Hunter’s reaction perfectly captures the audience’s secondhand embarrassment throughout the movie). The Leather Man, ostensibly the figure driving the city’s panic, drifts in and out of the film, his connection to the central narrative tenuous at best. The runtime accumulates into a sequence of disconnected side stories and stray ideas that arrive nowhere.
The performances are exaggeratedly campy, although committed for what they are. Sophie Thatcher and, particularly, Havana Rose Liu go full camp and entertain in glimpses. Charles Melton, playing it straight, is atrocious. The visuals start cool but get repetitive quickly. By the tenth time you see characters lit by color-shifting neon with hazy smoke, which happens in the first five minutes of the film, you already get the idea of what the film is going for, and it is easy to grow largely uninterested. German Expressionist set design and wacky costumes add to the sleek visuals, yet on their own, they become merely noise.
The most puzzling choice is hiring Pino Donaggio to score the film. Brought in late, after Refn decided the film needed to be operatic, the longtime Brian De Palma collaborator delivers a strong orchestral score with memorable themes and complex string composition. It is well-composed music that rarely fits the tone of the film, which, with its retro-atmospheric staging, asks for a more synth-led score. There are many moments where it grows increasingly distracting, especially as the composer is left alone to generate momentum and urgency the film never bothers to attempt.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Her Private Hell extends Refn’s style-over-substance (and over-coherence) filmmaking, this one even more a collection of disjointed pieces he finds visually cool without any unifying meaning. It is awful cinema all around, and by far the worst thing I watched at Cannes 2026. It earns its title. For its duration, I felt transported to my own private hell.