Hamnet (2025) Review

The story into the death of their son Hamnet and how Agnes and William Shakespeare attempt to deal with the grief. Leading to the production of Hamlet, one of his most famous tragedies.

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We get to see the way that Agnes and William meet one another and it’s not exactly an incredible romance or anything amazing in my opinion. It was not really groundbreaking and it was very lacklustre to start off the romance, which may just be one reason why I wasn’t fully taken in by the story.

As she gets pregnant they then marry and another pregnancy follows and I could have done without two birth scenes in all honesty. Especially given the strange nature of the first one and into the woods, I mean what was going on with all of the witchcraft aspects as well? Anyway then we have the twins and how that starts off.

Many years then pass with William spending a lot of time in London with his plays, we see Agnes with the children and when the plague hits the devastating impact that this will then have on them all. I’m not sure if the fact that I don’t have children made this not hit me as hard as someone who does have children? Obviously yes it is a very sad and heartbreaking situation.

My biggest issues with this film were that it just did not manage to move at any sort of pace, the first hour and maybe a little more so so painfully slow I had lost a lot of interest. The final 20-30 minutes I was more engaged as we got to see the play of Hamlet being performed, I wanted to see more of that link. The only thing I will give credit for is how the film highlights how people deal with grief in different ways and quite frankly that would have been a better focus for more of the film.

The hype surrounding the film is extremely over the top, it is complete award season bait in terms of the way it has been marketed and it does not live up to any of that in my opinion. This is not even Jessie Buckley’s best performance, a couple of screaming moments doesn’t mean it is an amazing performance. Paul Mescal has done nothing to win me over and he’s not impressive at all.

The film was stolen by both Jupe brothers in my opinion with the debut from Jacobi being the most impressive performance within the film. Noah then taking on the role on stage and highlighting just how talented he is in different roles.