Her Private Hell (2026) ‘Cannes’ Movie Review: Nicolas Winding Refn Descends Into Another Flashy Narrative Purgatory

It’s been a full decade since Nicolas Winding Refn last got behind the camera to release anything bound for the big screen, but like most of the long-absent directors appearing on the Croisette in 2026, the Danish director’s return with “Her Private Hell” signals an auteur who seems to have never left. As with any filmmaker in such a position, the question arises—depending entirely on both the filmmaker and the viewer following them—of whether or not an easy slip right back into the comfort zone is even desirable at all, or whether such an absence should bring with it something in the way of personal and artistic growth evident on the screen.

This is, of course, ignoring the fact that Refn himself has spent the intervening decade crafting miniseries and clothing ads disguised as short films, meaning that “Her Private Hell” basically comes off the heels of the filmmaker recently exploring changes in format and runtime that, under different circumstances, might benefit his undeniable “style over substance” approach to directing. From “The Neon Demon” to The NEON-Produced, Refn’s segmented visual priorities have perhaps, in the time since he last tried his hand at pacing a project that caps out around two hours, found even greater polish in the streaming age, but so too has the vacuity of their artifice been made more obvious and unendurable than ever before.

That increase in budget and hunger for shiny excess is certainly apparent from the first moment Elle (Sophie Thatcher) appears from the mist descending on a vaguely futuristic, “Blade Runner with iPhones” metropolis. The setting—or whether or not it’s even supposed to be in a real country—is never explicitly stated, but the large swath of Japanese-speaking supporting players gives us a ballpark estimate to satiate our basic curiosity and Refn’s endless Asiatic aestheticisation.

The terminally bored actress/heiress and daughter of some vaguely defined powerful figure named Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott), Elle spends most of her time pent-up in the penthouse suite of a hotel overlooking that perpetual cloud of mist, distant from its grip that threatens to consume anyone in a purgatorial haze shrouding a mysterious, glowing-eyed serial killer known only as The Leather Man. At the same time that Elle is passively avoiding the fog, Private K (Charles Melton), an American G, is looking to descend further into its obscurity, hoping to find the Leather Man and return—or avenge—one of the killer’s victims: his own daughter.

What these two stories have to do with one another amounts to little more than a daughter distant from her powerful father and a father powerless to move on from the loss of his daughter, and “Her Private Hell” ultimately foregrounds this imbalance by making Melton’s storyline the far more engrossing of the two. Not that Refn is breaking any new ground by having a chiselled actor looking stoic as he periodically bursts into a series of brutal, neon-lit ass-kicking, but in comparison to Thatcher’s antics—including but not limited to barking like a dog with Havana Rose Liu, thirsting over Diego Calva, and being perpetually annoyed by Kristine Froseth as a wannabe influencer—the competition isn’t all that fierce.

It’s fitting enough that “Her Private Hell” constitutes Refn’s cinematic follow-up to “The Neon Demon,” because his 2016 feature largely reads, in retrospect, as a pivoting point from which the filmmaker decided to forego the stunted masculinity of “Drive” and the allegorical atmosphere of “Only God Forgives” and decided instead to dive head-first into the glitter without coming up for air. As soon as Refn starts writing from the perspectives of women (including his recent miniseries “Copenhagen Cowboy”), the clearer his limitations become insofar as finding a compelling point of intersection between the vapidity of his aesthetics and the emptiness of his characters.

“The Neon Demon,” at least, benefitted from the clarity—some might say, bludgeoning plainness—of Refn’s commentary on the modelling industry. If nothing else, regardless of how coherent it was, you knew the commentary was *there*. Comparatively, “Her Private Hell,” most plainly, seems to find in Elle’s deadpan aloofness some vague interest in the hollowness of influencer culture, but even if he did choose to dive into that rabbit-hole more thoroughly (which, in case it wasn’t clear by now, he doesn’t), how much can we really expect to gain from Refn taking this position in 2026?

The only major shift in Refn’s sensibilities, curiously, appears to be a reliance on a far more orchestral musical score, with synth-heavy collaborator Cliff Martinez sitting this one out in favour of Pino Donaggio’s traditionally oriented instrumental soundscape. (You’re far more likely to hear the plunk of a xylophone than a keyboard this time around.) This is, of course, until “Her Private Hell” plunges into its final abyss, and the synth keys return to herald the restoration of a static inferno; a glowing Hell is the only place where Nicolas Winding Refn still feels comfortable, and increasingly, that seems like the problem.

Read More: Every Nicolas Winding Refn Film Ranked

Her Private Hell (2026) Movie Links: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Wikipedia, Letterboxd

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