WISE Score
Avg. Tomatometer
Daisy Ridley flips Shakespeare's classic tragedy on its head, giving Hamlet's doomed love interest a spine, a plot, and an exit strategy.
6.557%
60
If your high schooler is slogging through Hamlet for English class, Ophelia is a solid palette cleanser. Daisy Ridley plays Ophelia not as a fragile girl who loses her mind and drowns in a river, but as a clever insider trying to survive the rotting court of Elsinore.
It gets melodramatic and plays fast and loose with the Bard's plot, but the shift in perspective works. Keep the PG-13 intensity in mind: expect swordfights, poisonings, bloody skirmishes, and an intimate bedroom scene.
Best for teenagers 14 and up. The PG-13 rating comes from sword fights, blood, dark political betrayal, and a sensual love scene.
Deals heavily in court corruption, treason, illicit poison trades, and romantic betrayal. Not designed for a lighthearted family viewing.
Re-centers a classic Shakespearean tragedy from a overlooked perspective, offering creative twists on famous narrative beats.
PG-13 content including swordfights, poisonings, bloody battle scenes, and a sensual lovemaking scene showing a bare back.
Serves as an engaging companion piece for high schoolers reading Hamlet, sparking discussions on narrative perspective and female agency.
Every high school student knows the traditional arc: Hamlet sulks, Ophelia sings sad songs, loses her mind, and dies off-stage. Ophelia throws that narrative out the window, leaning into the novel by Lisa Klein to imagine what happens if the quietest girl in the room is actually the smartest operator in Denmark.
This is not a replacement for reading the text, but it makes a great exercise in media analysis. Watching this alongside or after reading Hamlet opens up simple conversations about authorial perspective and narrative agency. Ask your teen what the movie gains by centering Ophelia—and where the plot stretches credibility to force a different ending.
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