Her Private Hell Review: Sophie Thatcher is Innocent in Confusing Mess

Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive, The Neon Demon) returns with another polarizing installment in Her Private Hell, a part mystical and part grounded film about an actor finding her way in a bizarre world.

Synopsis:

When a mysterious mist engulfs a futuristic metropolis, unleashing a deadly and elusive entity, a troubled young woman searches for her father. Her quest collides with an American GI on a harrowing odyssey to rescue his daughter from Hell.

Cast:

Sophie Thatcher, Charles Melton, Havana Rose Liu, Dougray Scott, Diego Calva

Release Date:

In Theaters Now

Sophie and Havana are Lone Bright Spots

Credit: NEON

You are going to find out very quickly that I really did not enjoy this movie. However, I thought I could dedicate a section here to at least the few positives that came out of it. My main draw for this was Sophie Thatcher as the star, as I am a huge fan of hers from Yellowjackets and other horror projects like Companion or Heretic. Although the majority of this movie doesn't really give her much to do, she really shines in the scenes that give her any bit of challenging material. Ditto that for Havana Rose Liu, who I was not really familiar with before this. The dynamic between the two of them is really the only intriguing thing in the story and there are a few scenes where they are acting their hearts out. I think Sophie definitely proved she can be a lead actress and I will now be more inclined to watch any of Havana's future projects.

The last thing I'll say is I did respect the bright colors and costumes that were used here. Unfortunately the use of them does lead into a negative, but I always do like watching a movie that is beautiful to look at.

Brutal Dialogue and Script

Credit: NEON

Simply put, this was a really hard watch. The main reason for that may be the screenplay, which is both just compleltey boring and creates bits of dialogue that will have you cringing. I've heard people complain about the dialogue in NWR films in the past, but I never really felt it until this film. It's like these aren't even real humans, but puppets that are learning to speak for the first time. I can see if you want to make that a stylistic choice as we start to learn more about them, but once it's an hour in that trope gets a little old. The conversations just don't pull you in because they either don't make sense or have no note of intrigue for the audience.

It gets to a point where you are only 40 minutes into the movie and you realize that there's just nothing inherently interesting about what is going on. The synopsis that I listed above is kind of strange because that's not really what the movie is about. They never explicitly say or imply that Sophie's character is looking for her father or that Melton's daughter has anything to do with Hell. If you want to tell me that this was meant to be implied, that's fine, but it didn't come across that way at all and that can alienate an audience member like me.

Confusing Storylines Are Never Connected

Credit: NEON

One of the strangest things about this film is that there are two main storylines going on at once that have absolutely zero connection until the end. Even when that connection does come through, it's compleltey unearned and there's no natural flow at all. On the one hand, we have Sophie as our quasi main character. It starts off with exploring the relationship between her and her father plus some material about her acting career. I actually was somewhat interested in this storyline to start, not withstanding the ten minute power rangers action scene that just serves zero actual purpose, but then on a dime they switch to Melton as a private officer searching for his daughter. We just give a complete halt to Sophie's storylines to stay with Melton for a long period of time, then when we eventually switch back to her, it seems like there's an entirely different character arc. The father thing is essentially left in the dust and now we are attempting to address the relationship with Havana's character.

We eventually have the crossover between these two leads by the end, but there is just zero setup for it besides the fact that we know they are on their journeys in the same town. This lack of connection just ended up frustrating me, because each large stretch we spent with either character just had me wanting to switch to the others perspective. It's not like either of their storylines were inherently interesting, but I was just hoping maybe something would finally get me into the story. Both are annoyingly confusing and as I said, don't really have a consistent character arc by the end. There's what I assume is supposed to be a major payoff in the final sequence, but in no way does it feel rewarding for either of them because there was just no natural buildup or explanation.

Just Plain Bizarre

Credit: NEON

After watching Neon Demon rather recently, I kind of thought I knew why this film had been so divisive at Cannes. Because when it came to that film, I both acknowledged that it was a bit strange and also totally got exactly what the storytelling was attempting to tell. Where this film is concerned, it's really just bizarre just to be bizarre. There's so many weird sequences that just made it impossible for me to get into it. Trust me, I've seen my fair share of weird films to this point and for the most part I can handle it, but this was just gross scenes that served no real purpose to the story. To rattle off a few - two characters canonically learned how to speak in wolf, one character feeds their underwear to another and one ignores a character being murdered because they are in an intimate encounter with someone else. Yeah.

The last thing I want to say is that this movie just didn't really know what it wanted to be. It's fine if you want to build out this whole mystical world, but then the story itself is mostly human and grounded. Those two don't really mix unless these fantastical sequences are meant to be symbolic and not actually material, which is not the case here (but is in Neon Demon, for example). Most character arcs start a certain way then compleltey go another direction a few scenes later. When you are actively trying to confuse the audience, that's not really a winning recipe for a film.

Final Thoughts

This is probably the worst film I've ever reviewed for the site. I never like being this negative, but I have to be for a film I was actually excited for. I tried really hard to like it, but I'm not even sure the filmmakers knew what they were making here.

Rating: 1.5/5 Stars

Her Private Hell is currently ranked 50th out of the 51 new releases that I've seen this year.

Editor's Note: I've only included the top 20 from my 2026 new releases list, for editing purposes.

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