Not surprisingly, we are blasted with color, sound, leather, and gorgeous people with Nicolas Winding Refn’s return to film. “Her Private Hell” doesn’t have much of a story relying heavily on metaphor and visuals to get by. As a fierce defender of  “Drive” and “Neon Demon” it’s tough to digest this latest film of his. Refn’s attempt to bounce off the look and feel of “Neon Demon” and go far more surreal and dreamlike in this. The result is the most unwatchable film of the year. A film that feels like a perpetual eighties music video. A film that just boldly lifts technique and aesthetic  from De Palma and David Lynch.  A synthetic blend of the two styles. One thing that those two filmmakers understood is that an amazing film score and amazing costumes can only go so far for a film, you need a story.  The incohesiveness of the story is not what is troubling- its that every character in this film is abhorrent and uninteresting- fantastically uninteresting. It’s quite amazing how all the characters are so dull. Add to it that each character is out right annoying in their own way. Refn even added a character, Hunter just to be more annoying than the others. Well done. Having setting and dialogue dripping in metaphor is not enough. Characters bouncing from moody to solemn then back to moody all while Refn desperately tries to hide his horniness in the film is the comedic part of it all. 

In “Neon Demon” Refn was clearly taking on the theme of the model industry being a devouring animal that only cares to be fed and that concept can also be absorbed into the models themselves. Here Refn’s is taking on the concept of overbearing fathering that hinders daughters and females development.  Using a subplot of a tortured person named, the Leatherman, that’s what? A ghost? A monster? At the end who cares. 

“Her Private Hell” is a saturated color of pretentiousness. Throughout  it feels like a film Refn is forcing to work rather than just let it work. A person that is adamant about his style of filmmaking that doesn’t feel original at all anymore. 

Gorgeous women that are attracted to other gorgeous women and playing it out with touching and kissing is not provocative anymore. It’s not shocking and doesn’t offer an element of danger or risque to the film. The entire film wishes it was just a music video instead of a full feature film. Maybe Nicolas Winding Refn will be honest with himself and just do that.

“Her Private Hell” might have something compelling to say about the hindering and suppressing double-play of fathers on younger women and even fathers to their daughters but it all lost like the mist and fog in the film, which to me is the greatest metaphor in the film.  No clarity does not equal mystifying  4.5/10