The Surprising, Exquisite Folk Horror of ‘Hamnet’
At first glance, or even second, Hamnet is not a film that says “folk horror.” Chloe Zhao’s acclaimed historical drama, based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel of the same name, is part family saga and part deconstruction of how a real tragedy in the life of William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) inspired one of his masterpieces. It’s got romance, emotion, historical detail, and a genuinely cathartic ending that brings its fans to tears. It’s not a horror film.
And yet, watching Hamnet for the first time, I couldn’t help but see the bits of old-world magic and mystery creeping up through the film. I’m not saying Zhao’s film will outright frighten you – unless you’re a parent; it’s a parent’s nightmare – but for those of us who thrive on the energy of a folk horror film, it has plenty of haunting rewards.
SPOILERS AHEAD for Hamnet
Though the broadest possible description of the film’s plot is “William Shakespeare turns a family tragedy into his play Hamlet,” the real star of the film is Jessie Buckley as Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes (often called Anne in popular history). She is the first character we meet in the film, and it is her wisdom, steadfastness, and spirit that help propel Shakespeare from simple country tutor to celebrated star of the English stage.
When we first meet Agnes, she is lying in the forest, not exploring or working, but simply trying to be with it. This forest, from a beautiful old tree to the mouth of a small woodland cave, is a sacred space for this woman, the place in the world where she can feel closest to her true self. Part of a line of wise women in her family, Agnes mixes herbal remedies while reciting their rhyming recipes, keeps a hawk, and sees visions of the future. In Elizabeth England, that makes her a figure of tremendous speculation, as rumors swirl that she’s the daughter of an old witch who lives in the forest, that she could hex you, or that she could simply bewitch you.
Agnes bewitches young Shakespeare not with magic, but with the simple, luminous way in which she lives her life. Agnes connects with the world in a way Shakespeare does not, in a way that fascinates and beguiles him. He falls in love with her, and at the mouth of the forest cave where Agnes often goes to sit, she makes him tell her stories, blending his magic with her own.
As solitary as Agnes might appear in her magical practice, once she meets Shakespeare, this blending of her world with William’s proves to be a potent cauldron of fulfillment. They marry, have their first child, and watch as Shakespeare’s star begins to rise as a writer. Her folk remedies and portents emerge as ways in which she can care for her family, giving a spark of the ancient ways of living in concert with nature to her children and husband.
Humble Beginnings
This sense of care and magical love with which Agnes surrounds her family is not just magical thinking. It has real, material benefits and consequences, from the way she heals a wound on William’s head to her insistence on giving birth to their first child on the forest floor, in keeping with her own esoteric ways and with family tradition. In one of her visions, seen when she first falls in love with Shakespeare, she sees him becoming a great playwright, and sees herself on her deathbed with two children watching over her.
When the time comes for the birth of that second child, Agnes’ extended family refuses to let her go into the forest, and insist that she give birth at home. It terrifies her, not just because it’s a break with tradition, but because she fears the bond she’s built with the natural world will somehow warp, even break. She fears, in simple terms, a curse.
That curse seems to manifest when Agnes gives birth not to one child, but to twins, and the second one, a girl, seems to be stillborn. Agnes’ magic, a prayer she puts out into the same universe she has spent so many years nurturing, works to revive the child, leaving her with three children and putting her visions of the future in doubt. But Agnes was never wrong, not about the number of children she’d see on her deathbed, and not about the importance of a woodland birthing.
The Shakespeares’ prosperity continues. They buy a bigger house, William’s career keeps blossoming, and Agnes even sees a vision that her new son Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe) will become an icon of the stage just like his father. Hamnet builds on this wish, telling his parents he wants to sword fight onstage, just like his father taught him. All the while, Agnes’ concern is placed not with Hamnet, but with her daughter Judith (Olivia Lynes), the twin who almost died. Surely she is right about the way her visions play out. Surely she will be prepared when the worst comes.
She is Not Prepared.
One of the great tenets of folk horror, and supernatural horror in general, is the idea that magic, the universe, or whatever you’d like to call it, doesn’t really lie to you, but it does produce outcomes you simply can’t conceive of until they’re at your doorstep. The residents of Summerisle in The Wicker Man are quite clear about who they are and what they do; we just don’t realize it’s lethal until the final minutes. The family in The Witch aren’t wrong about the darkness lurking in the woods, but they are wrong about the final form it will take.
Agnes Shakespeare is not wrong in thinking that Hamnet will flourish on the stage, but she is wrong about how. When illness seizes her children, she’s convinced that Judith will die, leaving Hamnet without his twin, but as soon as she’s prepared herself for this outcome, the universe flips it. Hamnet dies in his mother’s arms, while Judith looks on in horror.
Hamnet’s death is both a historical and fictional inspiration for Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and the film’s heart-wrenching finale devotes itself to this translation of history. Agnes, furious at the news that her husband has written about the family’s great tragedy without her consent, goes to the theater without telling him, and watches, stunned, as one of William’s great tragedies unfolds before her eyes. The visions were never wrong. She will die with two children at her bedside, and Hamnet will be a star of the stage. He even gets to be in a sword fight.
Rich in Folk Spirit
In Agnes Shakespeare’s time, the kind of wisdom she practiced in the forest, a blend of herbal knowledge, old remedies, and psychic connection to the natural world, was under attack. She lived in the peak of European witchcraft trials, and while she never faced that particular persecution herself, she enters the film very aware of her precarious position. Folk horror is perhaps most easily defined as the friction that emerges when the old ways of the natural world and the new ways of the modern world collide, but it’s not always about collision.
Agnes is a devotee of the old ways, while Shakespeare’s plays helped write the modern world into existence. But one does not exist without the other. Yes, Hamnet is above all else a meditation on how life and art converge, and how you can make something beautiful out of grief, but it’s also a meditation on how the old magic never really leaves us. It feels as if, through Hamnet Shakespeare, Agnes and William have struck a kind of cosmic bargain with the old gods of the forest, building a legacy they did not foresee, but which nevertheless persists.
So when Agnes reaches out to the actor playing young Hamlet mid-performance in the film’s emotional climax, she is not just touching a young man who looks like her departed son. She is reaching through the universe and touching her son’s spirit, making contact across eternity. It is, perhaps, her greatest magical act, and cements Hamnet‘s place not as a folk horror film, but as a film rich with the folk horror spirit.
Hamnet is now playing in theaters.
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