I always make time in my schedule for animation in the TIFF lineup. The 2025 edition had me setting three aside, yet Hosoda’s Scarlet was the one I was the most intrigued about. The Oscar-nominated and modern anime auteur, often drawn to tales of revenge, decided to craft a Hamlet reimagining where a medieval princess consumed by vengeance crosses into an otherworld and meets a modern-day nurse who teaches her to let go of her darker impulses. As a fan of Shakespeare reinterpretations that take bold swings, the idea of such a reimagining seemed fantastic.
The problem is that its execution never matches the promise, and, as surprising as it may seem, the animation style is the biggest reason. It adopts a style not that different from last year’s The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, where intricate 3D backgrounds are mashed with simplistic 2D character models, and like that film, the choice holds back any immersion. Not helping is that the 2D animation itself feels awkward, with stiff character movements and body proportions that are constantly distracting. The story also rushes through its first act, making the impact of significant deaths fail to land, and in consequence, leaving Scarlet’s whole journey hollow. The nurse arc is more engaging, though the reasoning that gets him into the otherworld never fully engages.
With try-hard-to-be-cool images like a giant ship that end up feeling exactly like that, random and unsuccessful attempts, along with a very distant character journey, Scarlet unfortunately becomes the weakest of the three animated films and the weakest of the three Hamlet variations at this year’s festival. It does contain one particular musical moment that brims with optimism and briefly lifts the film with a burst of unexpected life, but that is about it.
This is part of Reviews On Reels TIFF 2025 Coverage. Due to the hectic rhythm of a film festival, it may be tweaked in the future. Still courtesy of TIFF.
- 1Sentimental Value
- 2Hamnet
- 3One Battle After Another
- 4Ne Zha 2
- 5Blue Moon
- 226Scarlet#226 of 256
- Where to watch
- Rent or buy at Apple TV Store, Amazon Video
- Where to watch
Max
Play trailer
- Original title
- 果てしなきスカーレット
- Director
- Mamoru Hosoda
- Genre
- Animation, Action, Drama, Science Fiction
- Cast
- Mana Ashida, Masaki Okada, Yutaka Matsushige, Kotaro Yoshida, Koji Yakusho, Masachika Ichimura, Yuki Saito, Shota Sometani
- Rated
- 14A
- Screenwriter
- Mamoru Hosoda
- Composer
- Taisei Iwasaki
- Cinematography
- Akiko Saito
- Editor
- Shigeru Nishiyama
- Country
- Language
- Japanese
- Box office
- $1.73 million