“Her Private Hell”
“Her Private Hell” (109 min, Rated R for some strong bloody violence, sexual content, and language) 3 out of 10
In the wake of “The Odyssey” opening on July 17th and before the new “Spider-Man” movie opens on July 31st, there just wasn’t much going on in terms of new releases on July 24th accounting for “Haunted Heist,” “Motor City,” “Pinocchio Unstrung,” and “Evil Dead Burn” still hanging around, it left me having to choose “Her Private Hell” to review. That’s not much of a choice…three horror movies and a shoot-em-up actioner starring muscleman Alan Ritcherson…a snapshot of filler fodder at the nation’s multiplexes between the box-office behemoths.
Another reason to review “Her Private Hell” is that avant-garde maverick filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn directed it – and that alone counts for something the other films didn’t have…an unconventionally-driven filmmaker who you can count on delivering a confoundingly acerbic film of unusual nature. And with early word out on this film before its release, I knew what I was getting myself into. And I was right…it’s a brain-numbingly ridiculous film with a lot of visual eye candy.
I’m not sure billing it as a sci-fi horror thriller accurately describes its contents, if that’s what you call it – a film of irrationality that doesn’t feature a story based in reality, lacking characters that pop in-and-out of frame amid lavishly-designed set-pieces bordering on extreme surrealism. It’s as if the characters, mostly sexily-clad young women, exist in a dream-like state with no purpose for their being. As to what roles these superfluous characters play is unclear, but at the center are four characters that serve as the film’s meager driving force of whatever Refn is trying to convey.
The setting is in a futuristic dystopian cityscape…tall skyscrapers obscured in a thick mist in an Asian-fused underworld of open sexuality and violence. It may be eye-catching, but serves little purpose in the film since most of it takes place inside gaudily-designed rooms. Elle (Sophie Thatcher) is a young actress about to start a new film, is at odds over her father’s new bride, Dominique (Havana Rose), a sexy dominatrix not much older than Elle, who antagonistically prods Elle to despise her. It turns out Elle’s father is a masochistic serial killer called “Leatherman.”
As the women engage in verbal abuse of each other, and Leatherman is out vivisecting his victims, an American soldier named Private K (Charles Melton) is engaged in his own killing spree taking out underworld thugs in search of his missing daughter. It is hinted that Elle may be his daughter…we don’t know. These lavishly-designed bloodbath scenes of sexualized violence are shocking, catching you off guard. With Elle and Dominique engaged in a battle of wits, when Leatherman reenters the story, and bodies start piling up, it ends on a foreboding note as to what may lie in Elle’s future.
I’m not sure if the nonsensical mostly dead-end plotting leading to this disturbing climax is what Refn intended, but if so, and for that purpose, it’s a letdown…a substantive waste of our time…an exercise in futility…a story with a narrow and dark message…the “hell” of title? And what about the rest of the characters? In what way do they matter? Does any of this aimless storytelling say about a future society with no moral foundation? It makes you wonder what state of mind its creative writer-director was in while making a film that seems to be missing a point…maybe a soul.
“Her Private Hell” opened at theaters on July 24th.
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