HAMNET
A beautifully made story of grief and grace — for grown-ups, not the kids.
Should You Watch It?
If you can watch a film about deep loss without it wounding you, this one has real gifts to offer. Chloé Zhao's drama about William Shakespeare's marriage earns its four stars: it's tender, patient, and builds to an ending that critics and this review both call powerful and beautiful. Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal anchor it with performances worth your time.
But this is not a film to hand to your kids. Before the leads officially marry, they consummate their engagement in a scene the film partially depicts. There are two intense birthing scenes. A child dies of plague. And Shakespeare's wife carries an occult-tinged "sixth sense," including a moment where she sees her dead son's spirit.
None of that cancels the film's real virtue — a mature, honest meditation on marriage, grief, and how we honor the people we lose. It's simply not for everyone in the house. Adults: go, and go prepared. Families: watch something else together.
The Story
NO SPOILERS — WE KEEP THE SURPRISESBefore he was the most famous playwright in the English language, William Shakespeare was a young husband trying to make a life. HAMNET follows Will and his wife, Agnes, from their courtship through the early years of his career — a career that pulls him away to London while she raises their children at home. The distance strains their marriage even as his love for his family never wavers. Then tragedy tests everything they've built. What happens next is the story the film asks you to sit with.
Is It Any Good?
Four stars means this is excellent, and the source material behind this review backs that up. Zhao's pacing is deliberate — the film "unfolds a bit slowly" early on — but that patience pays off in an ending praised as "powerful" and "beautiful." Jessie Buckley's performance as Agnes is called superb, and the scene where she and Paul Mescal's Will work through their grief together is singled out as a highlight. Real-life brothers Jacobi Jupe and Noah Jupe, playing Hamnet and Hamlet, also earn praise. This is a film that takes its time to earn an emotional payoff — and, by most accounts here, succeeds.
The Worldview
At its center, HAMNET tells the truth about something Scripture also insists on: that grief is real, that love survives distance and even death, and that honoring the memory of those we've lost can be part of healing. The film frames Hamnet's death as an act of sacrifice — the boy prays to be taken in his sister's place — and treats that sacrifice with real weight rather than sentimentality. The marriage's path from anger to reconciliation is handled with care.
Where the film departs from a biblical frame is in how it locates its hope. Agnes is written as a healer with an occult "sixth sense" and a mystical bond with nature; late in the film, she sees her dead son's spirit smile at her. The children's playful reenactment of the witches from Macbeth is lighthearted, but it sits alongside a ghost scene from Hamlet itself, staged within the story. None of this is celebrated as truth-claim so much as atmosphere, but it's there, and sensitive viewers should know it going in.
The film also takes some liberties with the record: Shakespeare was reportedly just eighteen when he married Agnes, a gap the film doesn't visually preserve, and recent scholarship questions whether his time in London strained the marriage as much as the story suggests. Neither choice changes the film's emotional truth, but both are worth knowing.
The ache this film understands — a mother and father searching for light after losing a child — is one only the gospel fully answers. Scripture doesn't just honor grief; it promises an end to it: "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more" (Revelation 21:4).
The Content Guide
The specifics — spoilers included by nature — so you can judge for your own family.
Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements
Strong moral worldview with some redemptive elements about the love between William Shakespeare and his wife and children, with a focus on their loss and grief and ultimate healing when the Plague takes their young son and spares the son’s twin sister (but the movie shows the boy praying that his sister be spared, and he be taken in her place, so his tragic death becomes a moving act of sacrifice in the story), and Shakespeare finds a beautiful and powerful way to honor his son, but the wife and mother is depicted as a herbalist healer who has an occult “sixth sense” about things as well as a special connection to nature, and Shakespeare’s children have fun pretending to be the three witches form his play MACBETH (that scene is cute and played for laughs, and also shows how Shakespeare delights in and loves his children), plus wife and mother sees the spirit of her dead son smile at her and walk away, and the movie depicts Hamlet in the play encountering and speaking with the ghost of his murdered father, movie has some light feminist elements in its female portrayals, though the main people in the movie all have careers and businesses
Foul Language
No foul language
Violence
Two intense birthing scenes, father and his young son use sticks to pretend to do swordfights like the ones appearing in the plays he writes, the Plague strikes the youngest daughter, and her twin brother prays that he be taken instead, and he’s the one who dies, Shakespeare’s father slaps him in one scene, and Shakespeare gets angry and shoves his father against the wall to tell him never to do that again, and the movie enacts the final scene from the play HAMLET where people accidentally die, and Hamlet kills his murderous uncle whose evil plot has killed Hamlet and Hamlet’s mother, and the audience is greatly moved by Hamlet’s death on the stage
Sex
Partially depicted fornication between an informally engaged couple (they are fully clothed but Shakespeare has unloosened his belt and pants), which results in a pregnancy
Nudity
Brief upper male nudity
Alcohol Use
No alcohol use
Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse
No smoking or drugs;
Miscellaneous Immorality
Shakespeare’s father is abusive, but Shakespear finally rebukes him in one scene, and Shakespeare and his wife become estranged because he’s away in London for long periods of time (new research has found this is not totally true), and when their young son dies at 11, but they are reconciled at the end.
Talk About It
Questions for the drive home, the dinner table, or the youth group.
Hamnet's death is framed as a sacrifice — he asks to be taken in his sister's place. What does Scripture say about laying down your life for someone you love?
John 15:13Will and Agnes's marriage nearly breaks under the weight of distance and grief before it's healed. What does it take to reconcile after real hurt?
Ephesians 4:32 · Colossians 3:13The film says honoring a lost loved one's memory helps heal grief. How does that compare with what the Bible promises grieving people?
2 Corinthians 1:3–4 · Psalm 34:18Agnes is shown with a "sixth sense" and a vision of her son's spirit. Why does Scripture warn believers away from these kinds of supernatural claims, even well-meaning ones?
Deuteronomy 18:10–12The Final Word
This is a beautifully made film about a marriage tested by distance and shattered by loss — and about the hard, holy work of grieving well. It's also frank enough, in a few specific scenes, that it isn't for your kids. Our answer stands as given: worth the trip — adults only. If you're planning a family movie night instead, start with our latest family-friendly picks.
