Who could have possibly guessed that a Nicolas Winding Refn movie — one that’s a fusion of Blade Runner and The Fog and titled after a classic British sexploitation film — would get immediately panned as soon as it screened in competition at Cannes? You mean the director of Only God Forgives and Too Old to Die Young, who got unexpectedly famous after scoring a cultural mega-hit with Drive, made cinema alienating enough that the well-dressed throngs at the Festival hated it? Definitely not anyone who’s watched anything the man has made since 2012 (yes, this includes The Neon Demon). Refn makes confrontational cinema that, like a broken clock, is occasionally right about the zeitgeist. And Her Private Hell, his latest, looks like it ain’t easing up on anyone.
Seriously, we’re not joking: Just go look at Letterboxd. It’s just basically been review-bombed. But we often think Cannes audiences are wrong, and you may want to go ahead and prepare yourself for what might actually be a five-star banger. So, unless you’ve already clutched your pearls at the Festival, take a look at this heady, atmospheric trailer that NEON dropped. Just don’t sue them like that one lady did after she saw Drive.
Peep it:
Here’s a synopsis for Her Private Hell:
“When a mysterious mist engulfs a futuristic metropolis, unleashing a deadly and elusive entity, a troubled young woman searches for her father. Her quest collides with an American GI on a harrowing odyssey to rescue his daughter from Hell.“
Her Private Hell will hit theaters on July 24. The CinemaScore for this will be absolutely hilarious, so we’re praying they send someone out to poll angry filmgoers — that is, if they didn’t walk out halfway through and try to get refunds. This is, after all, the kind of shit we live for.