Hamnet (2025) Reviews: What Critics Said

Editorial note: This is a roundup of published criticism of Hamnet. Celluloid has not screened the film for this piece, and it carries no Celluloid rating. The critics are named and linked under Sources.

Is Hamnet worth watching?

Most critics say yes: Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel was widely received as a wrenching, beautifully made drama, with Jessie Buckley’s performance at its heart. Reviewers praised the acting, the photography and a finale that many found overwhelming. The dissent is pointed, though: some critics felt the film works its audience too hard and drags in its middle stretch.

What is Hamnet about?

Hamnet tells the story of love and loss that inspired the creation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It follows Agnes and her husband Will from courtship into family life with their children, including their son Hamnet, and through the grief that the title and the historical record foreshadow. Chloé Zhao directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Maggie O’Farrell, adapting O’Farrell’s novel. It was released in 2025 and runs 125 minutes. Jessie Buckley plays Agnes and Paul Mescal plays Will, with Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn, Jacobi Jupe and Noah Jupe. Release details and where to watch are on the Hamnet film page.

What critics praised

Reviewing from its festival run, Tim Grierson of Screen Daily called Hamnet a potent love story anchored by expertly judged performances. He found Buckley revelatory as a wild, instinctive woman who knows both the exhilaration of motherhood and the pain of loss, and thought Mescal’s poetic, wounded Will in keeping with earlier roles such as Aftersun. He admired Zhao’s lightness of touch, which avoids knowing hints of Will’s future greatness and shows him through his wife’s eyes, and the woodland photography of Łukasz Żal.

Michael Ordoña of TheWrap was the most emphatic, calling the film a towering achievement. He judged Buckley’s the best performance of the year and Mescal’s among the best too, and praised Jacobi Jupe as the boy at the centre of the story, along with Max Richter’s score. Crucially, he argued that Zhao never lets the audience feel her hand manipulating their emotions.

John Nugent of Empire described a wrenching meditation on death and grief, built on strong performances in service of a clear, confident vision. He thought Buckley’s work could shatter a viewer and found the finale heart-rending and fully earned. He also singled out Emily Watson and Jupe, whose naturalism he admired.

At The A.V. Club, Jesse Hassenger compared the film to an emotional wrecking ball. He credited the ferocity of Buckley’s performance and thought the closing act stunning, landing somewhere between an out-of-body experience and a flood of tears.

Where critics were divided

Hassenger’s praise came with reservations. Next to the open landscapes of Zhao’s Nomadland, he found the camera oddly restricted here, and felt the film was missing something in its middle section. He also thought the central marriage sometimes risked seeming perfunctory, with Mescal deliberately kept at a distance, and he acknowledged that some viewers would resist the film on those grounds. Nugent, while enthusiastic, felt the performances occasionally tipped into theatrical excess and noted a few jarring modern touches in the dialogue.

The strongest dissent came from Coleman Spilde in Salon, whose view was the reverse of Ordoña’s. He accepted that the film is effective but called it deeply manipulative, heaping distress on the audience rather than earning its tears. He found Mescal’s brooding close to laughable and the pace languid, and felt the finale’s use of a very familiar Max Richter composition made the film seem like a parody of itself. Even so, he praised Buckley’s physical performance and Jupe, who he felt outclassed actors twice his age, as well as Zhao’s handsome images.

Who is it for?

The film suits viewers drawn to literary adaptations, period drama and intense performances, and readers of O’Farrell’s novel. It centres on the grief of parents, so it will be a hard watch for some. It is rated PG-13 in the US and 12A in the UK. More titles are collected under drama.

The critical verdict

Most of the critics here regard Hamnet as a moving, superbly acted drama, with Buckley’s performance and the final act singled out again and again. Where they disagree is on method: Ordoña and Nugent found its emotion earned, while Spilde found it engineered and Hassenger sensed something missing in the middle. For most reviewers, though, the film’s cumulative force outweighed its flaws.