Her Private Hell

Nicolas Winding Refn returns after a decade-long absence with Her Private Hell, a hypnotic sci-fi horror that premiered at Cannes in May 2026. The film drops viewers into a futuristic metropolis swallowed by a supernatural mist, where a serial killer known as the Leather Man stalks women. Sophie Thatcher plays Elle Thunders, a young actress haunted by her father's disappearance. Charles Melton is Private K, an American GI searching for his missing daughter. Their paths intersect in a neon-drenched city built entirely on Copenhagen soundstages. Refn co-wrote with Esti Giordani, and Pino Donaggio delivers his first score for the director. Magnus Nordenhof Jønck's cinematography bathes every frame in red and blue gels. Produced by NEON and Refn's byNWR, this R-rated indie runs 1 hour 50 minutes. Early reviews praise its atmospheric tension and Thatcher's performance, though some find it beautiful tedium. [edit]

The film opens on the tops of skyscrapers peeking through a thick fog that blankets a neon-drenched city. Elle Thunders (Sophie Thatcher) is holed up in the gleaming Tower Hotel, preparing to star in a kitschy sci-fi film called Candy Floss, directed by a blonde influencer named Hunter (Kristine Froseth). The film-within-a-film is deliberately schlocky, resembling the original Power Rangers series with a crystal-coated mise-en-scène.

Complicating Elle's life is Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), her former best friend and former lover who has now become her stepmother after marrying Elle's father, Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott). Their psychosexual dynamic plays out in barely scripted scenes of emotional tension, with Elle's sexual advances toward Dominique representing a longing for parental love. Hunter becomes obsessed with Elle and drawn into this tangled web.

Meanwhile, a mysterious mist is oozing through the city streets, unleashing a serial killer known as the Leather Man (Jason Hendil-Forssell), a towering figure dressed head-to-toe in zippered leather fetishwear. The Leather Man returns from the underworld along with the mist, determined to find the daughter he once lost and prone to killing any young woman he finds in his path. His modus operandi involves inducing women to cry out "daddy!" before smashing in their heads and ripping open their ribcages.

Johnny Thunders introduces the lynchpin of the hazy plot through a grim bedtime story told to the film's cast in a lavish room colored by deep shades of blue and pink. He tells them the story of the Leather Man, a figure who searches for his daughter in the underworld but soon forgets what he is looking for. When the mist returns, he remembers, and he will destroy everyone in his way. Elle's father told this story likely in an attempt to impress her, claiming he would turn the ocean red before giving up on her, but it's all words and no action.

Parallel to Elle's story is that of Private K (Charles Melton), a stoic American GI roaming the streets of a post-war Tokyo-like setting. Private K is a blank space with sharp cheekbones and the shape of a person, a driven man searching for his missing daughter who has been abducted by the Leather Man. He prowls the streets in slow motion, fighting off yakuza-like men and even a sumo wrestler in brutal, gloriously gruesome fight scenes. Private K represents the image of the ideal father, a fantasy of Elle's dad searching for her and killing for her.

The film alternates between heavily stylized scenes in which the gorgeous people around Elle speak in poetic non-sequiturs (or, in one scene likely to be meme-d, speak "wolf" to one another) and scenes in which Private K punches people with brass knuckles or pops out their eyes with swords. The central conflict revolves around the mist, the Leather Man's rampage, and the intersecting quests of Elle (searching for her missing father) and Private K (hunting the Leather Man to rescue his daughter). Their paths collide in a city that feels both cold and alive. The film is set partially in Japan, featuring Japanese dialogue and actors including Shioli Kutsuna, Aoi Yamada, and Hidetoshi Nishijima, though all scenes were shot on sets in Copenhagen.[edit]