Her Private Hell 2026 is once again a reason to look into NWR's psycho-sexuality
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by Blender Dumbass
Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".
Nicolas Winding Refn appears to be incapable of making a movie that I don't want to analyze psycho-sexually. I would say more than that. I would say, that given the nature of his 2026 film Her Private Hell, we can assume, it is a direct sequel to his 2016's masterpiece The Neon Demon ( which I thoroughly psycho-sexually analyzed ) and a movie he made just before that Only God Forgives ( that deserves its fair share of analysis ). So... ↩ Reply
Her Private Hell is a meta-textual tale, about an actress named Elle, played by Sophie Thatcher. Meta-textual, because the story and especially the dialogue is forcing you to engage with the notion that you are watching a movie. The characters often say things like "this movie", or "you are an actress", talking both about the movie within the movie and about the movie Her Private Hell itself. c:0 ↩ Reply
For example, there is an extended sequence in a space-ship. We have a crash-scene. We have other sci-fi bullshit. We understand that this is the movie within the movie. The following scene is about the actresses being on set of this movie within the movie. But then by the end both realities collapse into one. The movie within the movie becomes the movie itself. If anything Her Private Hell is even more meta-textual ( because of stuff like that ) than Refn's other work, like Only God Forgives. At least Only God Forgives kind of, sort of makes sense without thinking about the meta-textual stuff. Her Private Hell is the meta-textual stuff. ↩ Reply
Let's analyze the story a little bit. ↩ Reply
So Elle is this cool actress girl. She comes into her neon-lit building, about to go up to the penthouse. And another girl Hunter ( Kristine Froseth ) stops her on her way up. From the cinematic language of this scene we can clearly read that Elle is sexually attracted to Hunter, giving us a clue that she is a lesbian, at least to some extent. c:1 ↩ Reply
We meet Elle's father Johnny Thunders ( Dougray Scott who played the bad guy in Mission Impossible II ) and his new wife ( Elle's step-mother ) Dominique, played by Havana Rose Liu. ↩ Reply
This is when the movie strongly enters its porn-film-industry writing style stage. ↩ Reply
The step-mom is the same age as Elle. Her dad is a fucking creep. And it seems like the step-mom is some kind of a lesbian herself. The movie pretty much introduces a mother-daughter sexual tension from the very beginning. And while ( using the porn-film-industry logic ) this is sort of okay, because she is just a step-mom, not real mom, the movie also has a weird almost fetishistic way to show the father. Making the audience assume, there might be some sexual-tension between Elle and her, MI2 villain, real father. ↩ Reply
Note, there was a very strong sexual tension between the main character and his mother in Only God Forgives. A recurring motive in Refn's films. And The Neon Demon had a lot of lesbian sexual tension. Including one character trying to seduce a minor, and when failing, out of rage, or something, deciding to have sex with a corpse, of a recently deceased girl. ↩ Reply
Back to Her Private Hell. ↩ Reply
The father appears to be some sort of movie executive. Perhaps his crazy fetishistic creep look was inspired by some people in the industry Refn knows. Or... ↩ Reply
Because this movie has this strange thing about a father trying to reconnect with his daughter, through being a bit too friendly with her peers ( which ends up leading to him marring one of them ), it could be some sort of reflection, on Refn's part, about his personal life. ↩ Reply
Let's do some math. Refn has 2 daughters with Liv Corfixen. She in 2013 made a documentary about the filming of Only God Forgives, where we can see the 2 girls. And while one looks to be about 3 or 4, the other one looks to be approaching 10. By The Neon Demon she is 13 or 14 ( a movie about a 16 year old ), and by now ( 2026 ) she is about the same age as Sophie Thatcher ( who plays Elle, the main character in Her Private Hell ).
Is this movie about how hard it is for Nicolas Winding Refn to be around his daughter, because she and her friends ( her age ) are proper hotties? Is this some kind of a twisted therapy session movie? Is this him arguing to himself that starting a relationship with a girl in the age of his daughter is a bad idea, because of what his daughter might go through? c:2 ↩ Reply
But wait a second... There is also the whole "relationship with the parent" part to this whole thing. As I previously stated, it is a recurring theme in Refn's work. ↩ Reply
The second main character in the movie is Private K played by Charles Melton. His story is thematically relevant to the analysis I did so far. He is a father who lost his daughter. And he is now on the quest to find her back. ↩ Reply
A little side-note. Charles Melton's casting is interesting in the context of the movie and might be meta-textual too. Charles Melton's worked on Warfare, where he also played a soldier. And before that he worked on May December where he plays a guy who had a kid at a very young age. ↩ Reply
Cinematically speaking, there is a meta-textual connection between Private K and Johnny Thunders, Elle's father. We are introduced to Private K via a fetish scene about Elle and her father. The father says cryptic bullshit about trying to find her, and then leaves. Leaving behind his leather jacket. Elle has a fetishistic appreciation of this jacket as she plays with it in her bed, revealing a few items inside of it, which appear to belong to Private K. ↩ Reply
At some point during the movie Private K changes his look. He removes his military clothes and puts on a leather jacket. ↩ Reply
There is also a third metaphorical layer to this father character. The devil himself. The leather-man. ↩ Reply
The leather-man is like the villain of this movie. A faceless leather-wearing scary dude who walks around killing girls in Elle's age. Hm... ↩ Reply
If this whole movie is Refn's own reflections on his own fatherhood, there seems to be 3 different levels to his own perception of himself. The good and strict soldier type of character. Who is a good father. Who will go through literal hell to find and protect his daughter. But this character is failing. ↩ Reply
Then there is the creep that cannot stop looking at girls in the age of his daughter. And finally there is the leather-man, so evil inside that he will kill everybody that even remotely resembling his daughter. ↩ Reply
In a twisted way the leather-man is jealousy. The leather-man is walking around killing, who appears to be Elle's romantic interests. She likes Hunter. The leather-man kills her. She likes the step-mom, the leather-man kills her too. But the leather-man fails to kill Elle herself. Instead Elle defeats the leather-man with a golden axe given to her by Johnny Thunders. By her fetish-filled, sex-dad. ↩ Reply
And that is when Private K finds his lost daughter. ↩ Reply
Important note. Nicolas Winding Refn made the story in a such a way that we as the audience are fully aware that Elle doesn't wear panties, while killing the leather-man. ↩ Reply
This movie is Nicolas Winding Refn, trying to find his true daughters, giving them the golden axe to defeat himself, if needed. Knowing that a time might come that he might wonder if they are wearing their panties. ↩ Reply
Happy Hacking!!! ↩ Reply
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Troler
c:0 September 10, 2026 Her Private Hell is a meta-textual tale, about an actress named Elle, played by Sophie Thatcher. Meta-textual, because the story and especially the dialogue is forcing you to engage with the notion that you are watching a movie. The characters often say things like "this movie", or "you are an actress", talking both about the movie within the movie and about the movie Her Private Hell itself.
⤴ ViewFor a moment I assumed this would be a meta-textual review.
Troler
c:1 September 10, 2026 So Elle is this cool actress girl. She comes into her neon-lit building, about to go up to the penthouse. And another girl Hunter ( Kristine Froseth ) stops her on her way up. From the cinematic language of this scene we can clearly read that Elle is sexually attracted to Hunter, giving us a clue that she is a lesbian, at least to some extent.
⤴ ViewYou're skipping over the fact the building is a very long peeeeeeeeeeenis.
8==================================================B
Troler
c:2 September 10, 2026 Is this movie about how hard it is for Nicolas Winding Refn to be around his daughter, because she and her friends ( her age ) are proper hotties? Is this some kind of a twisted therapy session movie? Is this him arguing to himself that starting a relationship with a girl in the age of his daughter is a bad idea, because of what his daughter might go through?
⤴ ViewI see it even more dastardly, namely, Refn is hot for his daughters.
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