I should make clear off the bat that I am not in the least bit allergic to Refn or his particular brand of hostile cinematic experimentation. In fact, quite the opposite. Drive was my favorite movie of its year (I know, I know, hardly a flex Film Bro). BUT! I went to bat for the boldly esoteric, aggressively cinematic Only God Forgives when it was being booed and pilloried, and even my semi-appreciation of The Neon Demon acknowledged that it was “aggravatingly vacuous but undeniably seductive.” And I like his weird, inaccessible early shit. Even though it’s weird and inaccessible.
What I could not abide here was how quickly Refn’s weirdness curdled into something more stilted than stylized, as though every bad performance, horrible effect, and dreadful dramatic pause existed primarily to prove how little Refn cared whether anyone who paid to see this thing enjoyed themselves. I’d go so far to say that the movie seems like a fuck you to the whole concept of entertainment itself.
Admittedly, there was one moment that actually worked for me involving the leather-clad killer, named – you guessed it – The Leather Man, making his first appearance. There’s some mythology about this future metropolis having occasional cases of evil neon fog (because of course a Nicolas Winding Refn city’s fog has to be neon). The Leather Man tears a woman’s chest open and kicks her through a window in a brief eruption of salacious violence that is brutal, ridiculous, and genuinely fun.
For perhaps ten seconds, the heightened effects and lurid artificiality clicked into place, and I actually leaned forward instead of actively dreading the next frame. Then the film cuts to an extended movie-within-a-movie sequence, a dreadful knockoff Star Trek production staged and performed with such intentional DGAF energy that all the air is immediately sucked back out of the theater and I once more felt suffocated.
It is noteworthy how wildly divisive Her Private Hell appears to be. Its supporters – few though they are – seem intensely passionate about its anti-naturalism, artificial performances, and purposeful ugliness. Meanwhile, as my friend and fellow critic Sara Michelle Fetters put it, its detractors “seem to loathe it on a visceral level.” Perhaps if you can forgive actively bad things and pay attention exclusively to the intent behind them, you can find something here to glom onto. I cannot, though I suppose that degree of interpretive charity is an admirable quality. Though one I clearly do not possess.
Refn’s later-career style has flirted with self-parody, but in Her Private Hell, it appeared to topple face-first into it and then remain there, waiting for the audience to, I dunno, applaud the fall? But I cheer only for the rake here. And the exit sign. Only God Forgives may have been thin on conventional plot and dialogue, but its violence, visual language, mythology, and moral rot felt purposeful. The Neon Demon was tedious and painfully obvious, yet its images could still seduce and infect the subconscious. Here, I found nothing beneath the affectation worth excavating. It felt like a middle finger to the entire concept of wanting to enjoy movies, a filmmaker rubbing the viewer’s nose in his refusal to provide pleasure, momentum, recognizable human behavior, or a compelling reason to remain in the room.
[READ MORE: Our review of ‘Neon Demon’ directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and starring Elle Fanning]
And here I was, squirming. And not in the productive or perversely pleasurable way a confrontational movie can make you squirm. This was awkward squirm. Secondhand-embarrassment squirm. The kind where the chair itself begins to hurt because watching the movie has somehow made sitting physically unpleasant. Refn clearly does not care what anyone thinks about his work, which is a totally admirable quality when that singularity produces something, you know, singular. Here, I found it just offensive, annoying.
It’s worth repeating that I did not stay for the whole thing. It is technically possible that the surreptitious pleasures of Her Private Hell lingered just beyond my departure time. That the affected performances transformed into something endearingly offputting, that the dreadful effects suddenly made sense and didn’t just seem like the cheapskate last call at the money bar for a director who just doesn’t care any more, that beneath the endless neon fog there was some towering work of cinematic genius. I doubt it. And was so confident in this doubt that I knew that I would be sparing myself an hour or so of punishment by just peacing out.
So while I cannot in good faith assign NWF’s latest a letter grade, what I can say is that what I did see ranks among the worst stretches of movie I can remember sitting through. One that tiled more stilted than stylized, more irritating than provocative, and so actively unpleasant that leaving became the only satisfying narrative development available to me. Watching Her Private Hell quickly became my private hell, so I did what any wise man with free will would do: stood up and walked away.
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By: Matt Oakes
Started blogging about film in college when the university paper wouldn’t have him. Dislikes your consensus film Twitter favorites. Devotee of horror movies that make him die a little inside. Catches films at festivals when he can. Proud SFCS and OFCS member and Tomatometer-approved critic. Editor-in-chief of Silver Screen Riot.
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