Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | September 18, 2025
To be or not to be? That was a question asked a lot at this year’s TIFF. Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet reimagined the creation of Shakespeare’s most iconic tragedy through the lens of the Bard’s grief over the loss of his son. Riz Ahmed took on the role for a version set in modern-day London in the midst of a culture clash. Mamoru Hosoda, the Japanese director behind the award-winning animated films Mirai and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, decided to use the play as the foundations for his own tale of the futility of vengeance. And his one has a dance number!
Our Prince of Denmark here is Princess Scarlet, a pink-haired adolescent who adores her father and wants nothing but good things for her family and her people. But, as we all know, treachery is afoot. The King’s brother Claudius wants power, and Queen Gertrude is willing to betray her husband to help him achieve it. Our intrepid princess wants revenge, but then something unexpected happens: she dies before she can exact it, as Claudius poisons her before she can do the same. Shakespeare, this ain’t.
Now, Scarlet is in what seems to be purgatory. She’s stuck in a desolate land where seasons and terrain seem to change at the drop of a hat. She’s dead but not entirely so. Mostly dead. She can die even further in this land, disintegrating into nothingness. But before she can allow that to happen, she must finish her plan. For Claudius and his goons are also in this land, and they’ve taken control of the lands around a giant mountain, upon the peak of which, according to legend, is the road to eternal paradise. Claudius wants it for himself. Millions of other lost souls demand otherwise.
Accompanying Scarlet throughout her mission is Hijiri, a Japanese paramedic from modern-day Japan who remains dedicated to his job from beyond the grave. In this liminal space where people from all walks of life, time, and geography mingle, violence and looting is rife. But Hijiri only wants to help. While Scarlett descends further into the throes of revenge, Hijiri takes it upon himself to be her conscience (and occasional nurse.) He’s no Ophelia but be prepared for heartache all the same.
The whole film is, it must be said, absolutely gorgeous to look at. The blend of animation styles is often dizzying. The film took four and a half years to make thanks to its unique look. Some landscapes look hyper-real, almost beyond our own world, while others feel like they were hazily recalled from a dream. Parts have the uncanny sensation of rotoscoping, which is sharply contrasted with moments where the shading feels like it was ripped from a PS2 game. It’s often a budget-saving strategy for anime to have static character faces but here, every micro-expression is clear, and made all the grander by some excellent voiceover work. Hosoda has decided that there’s no such thing as too much when it comes to this film: more blood can be shed, more characters can be added (the crowd scenes of thousands are rather startling in their detail), and more visuals can be layered atop one another.
It makes sense for this world, a liminal space between life and death where everyone goes. A Danish princess can mingle with a 21st century Tokyo kid. A Hula dancer performs for a caravan of Middle Eastern travellers. Medieval looters on horseback fight Samurai. The ambition is undeniable, although one cannot help but wish we got a more fleshed-out view of this place. Hosoda mercifully doesn’t bog the audience down with endless mythos or explanations for this afterlife, simply letting it be, but so many of its lusher and more intriguing details are rushed over to get back to the Hamlet of it all.
Despite the otherworldly setting and its inclusion of people from across time and space, Scarlet remains a pretty traditional retelling of Hamlet. The young royal seeks revenge at any cost but is slowly confronted with the realization that vengeance is soul-sucking and won’t heal you. Hijiri, a pacifist who hates conflict, keeps trying to convince Scarlet that there must be another way to live, although it sometimes feels out of place when he’s saying it amidst multiple people’s attempts to kill her. But it is a long way’s home from her beloved father and his pleas for diplomacy, a peace-driven approach that saw him labelled as a traitor by his power-hungry brother. Does forgiveness really have the strength to heal all wounds, even from beyond the grave, or do we carry that bitterness well into whatever lies beyond our realm?
When Hosoda takes wild swings with the story, things come alive. Scarlet has an out-of-body experience where she imagines what her life would be like had she been born in another time, and it’s done as a musical number! This set-up, which did make me cry, posits the most powerful message of Scarlet: What if we reject violence in favour of improving our lives in the moment, and that reverberates to the next generations? Scarlet is certainly a more hopeful version of this story than Shakespeare’s original.
It’s also still thoroughly an anime, complete with a highly emotional ending that has echoes of Spirited Away in its romance. Idealism and earnestness are at the heart of this tale, which may not be wholly faithful to the source material but it certainly feels vital. Maybe a greater fidelity to the original story would have given greater heft to Scarlet’s angst but surely it’s not a bad thing to want goodness to have its moment in the sun? Besides, by this point in the film, I was crying too hard to grumble about anything.
Scarlet had its North American premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. It will receive an awards qualifying run in North America later this year, followed by a wider theatrical release on February 6, 2026.
