Movie Review - Hamnet

Director: Chloé Zhao
Genre: Drama
Runtime: 125 minutes
Year: 2025
Starring: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Joe Alwyn, Emily Watson, Jacobi Jupe, Noah Jupe
 
Description: In late 16^th-century England, Agnes (Jessie Buckley), a healer sensitive to the world around her, builds a home with William (Paul Mescal), a local tudor and aspiring playwright. As their lives fracture, they are tested by distance, silence, and grief.
 
Review: The film adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s best-selling novel “Hamnet” by Oscar winner Chloé Zhao is a rare example of an adaptation that not only understands the soul of the source material but also amplifies it. It is a visually stunning and emotionally devastating portrait of grief, love, and the transcendent power of art.

Although Paul Mescal portrays a fragile yet powerful William Shakespeare (never named until the very end), this is unmistakably Jessie Buckley’s film. As Agnes, she is the emotional anchor; a woman with a powerful connection to nature. Zhao wisely chooses not to show the rise of the famous playwright in London, but to focus on the raw reality of family life in Stratford. The chemistry between Buckley and Mescal is palpable and makes the impending tragedy all the more painful.

The cinematography by Łukasz Żal is nothing short of sublime. He captures the English countryside in 1596 with a sensory richness that immediately transport the viewer into the mud and sunlight of the Elizabethan era. The scenes in which the plague slowly creeps into the household are portrayed with a suffocating tension. Max Richters’s music enhances the melancholic atmosphere.

The absolute highlight is the finale, in which the film shows an indescribably personal loss – the death of eleven-year-old Hamnet – is transformed into the universal masterpiece Hamlet. Zhao succeeds in giving familiar monologues from the play a new, deeply moving meaning that will bring even the most stoic viewers to tears.

“Hamnet” is a tearjerker of the highest order, but its more than that. It’s a story of loss and the aftermath of this, how people grief differently. The narrative structure of the middle section is somewhat uneven, but the emotional impact of the final scene more than makes up for it. I have only just read the book (which I gave a 5-star rating) and it always makes me happy to see a director succeeding into translating it to film. Beautiful film and a well-deserved Academy Award for Jessie Buckley.

Rating: 4,5/ 5

Book Review - Ring Shout by P. Djèli Clark

Title: Ring Shout
Author: P. Djèli Clark
Genre: Horror/ Historical Fiction
Published: 2020
 
Description: In 1915, “The Birth of a Nation” cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan’s ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.
 
Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan’s demons straight to Hell. But something awful’s brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up.
 
Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?
 
Review: “Ring Shout” by P. Djèli Clark is a devastating novella that completely blurs the lines between historical fiction, folklore, and cosmic horror. It is a rare kind of book that is both an adrenaline-pumping action thriller and a razor-sharp social commentary.
 
Clark makes a brilliant artistic choice by portraying the Ku Klux Klan not only as an ideological threat, but as a literal infection. In this story, the “Ku Kluxes” are monsters from another dimension on hatred and fear. By turning Klan members into physical monsters, Clark exposes the inhumanity of their ideology without trivializing the horrific historical reality. It shows that racism is not an abstract concept, but a force that distorts people into something unrecognizable.
 
The story is set in 1915, the year the film “Birth of a Nation” was released. Clark masterfully weaves this historical fact into the plot: the film serves here as a form of dark magic, a “shout” that propagates hatred and empowers the monsters. He contrasts this hatred with the Ring Shout, a deeply rooted tradition of enslaved Africans. As a result, the race issue becomes not only a struggle for survival, but a spiritual war in which culture and shared history are the most powerful weapons.
 
The horror element in “Ring Shout” is in a league of its own. Clark draws from the tradition of Lovecraft’s cosmic horror, but strips it of Lovecraft’s biased worldview. The descriptions of the Butcher Boys and the transformations are visceral and terrifying. Here, the horror serves a higher purpose: to visualize the trauma inflicted over generations. It is bloody, imaginative, and at times deeply unsettling. The story reminded me of a mix of “Sinners”, BlacKkKlansman” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”.
 
Maryse, the sword-wielding protagonist, is one of the most compelling characters I have read about in a while. Her struggle against the monsters outside her and the rage within her gives the story an emotional depth. “Ring Shout” is a masterfully written book that proves horror is the perfect medium for exploring the darkest pages of history. The book is short, under 200 pages, but packs a punch.
 
Rating: 5/ 5