The CEO of an Indian-owned corporation is dead—perhaps at the hands of his own brother. The CEO’s son, Hamlet, is determined to make his uncle pay, even if it destroys everything in the process. The latest take on one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays is a strong work of art, but its bloody deaths and sexual asides make this a difficult adaptation for families to engage with.
Death comes like a thief, we’re told. And it takes more than life; it takes from those still living, too. It can rob us not only of our loved ones, but our peace. Our reason. Even, at times, our sanity. It takes and takes, threatening to leave us only with grief and anger, confusion and emptiness.
So it is for Hamlet, heir to the throne of Elsinore—a powerful, global conglomerate headquartered in London. Hamlet’s father, Elsinore’s powerful CEO, is dead at the age of 77. And as Hamlet dabs yellow paste on his father’s body—preparing him, in Hindu tradition, for the next stage on his spiritual journey—the corporate crown prince is reeling from the loss.
But Circumstance has more in store.
Later, at the family mansion, Hamlet’s uncle Claudius tells Hamlet that there’ll be a happier celebration on the heels of his father’s funeral: a wedding. Yes, Claudius and Hamlet’s oh-so-recently widowed mother, Gertrude, are engaged.
Gertrude understands that some might see the new union as inappropriate, even incestuous. She knows the news will come as a shock to her son.
“Let not your mother lose her prayers, Hamlet,” she says, her eyes flicking across Hamlet’s face. “I pray that you stay with us.”
Hamlet offers dim, perfunctory acceptance—but deep down, he can’t accept. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. “Most wicked speed,” he says of the sudden courtship and betrothal. But Hamlet is left little time to consider it more closely. Soon, his friends whisk him into London’s teeming club scene: Neon images burrow through his brain as the music thumps and shrieks. Hamlet fills his body with liquor, drugs and misery. He steps outside to get some air and—there! Down the alley! Is that—can it possibly be—Hamlet’s father?
In the shadows, the spirit unpacks a horrific story: He died at the hands of Claudius, his brother. He begs his son to avenge him.
But how could Hamlet dare to do such a thing based on the testimony of a ghost? How can he be sure of what he saw and heard? And even if he was, would Hamlet have courage to strike his uncle down and accept what may come?
Hamlet’s heart wars with itself. It will not let him sleep. But rest—eternal rest—may be just around the corner.
Hamlet—both Shakespeare’s original 1601 play and this imaginative 2026 version of it—is a tragedy. As such, honorable motives are often sullied by base inclinations, bloody reactions and brutal circumstances. But for what they’re worth, let’s unpack some of those honorable motives.
Hamlet, the story’s conflicted hero, wants justice for his father. If Hamlet’s dad was murdered, well, someone should be punished for it, right? But he also wants to make sure that he punishes the right guy. Sure, the ghost might’ve told him that Claudius is as guilty as sin. But Hamlet knows better than to trust a stray spirit (which just might be a figment of his grieving mind, after all). He wants proof—and he concocts a clever way to find it.
A number of people care deeply for Hamlet in his “winter of discontent” (a quote from another Shakespeare play, but it fits.) First up is Ophelia, Hamlet’s love interest who is deeply concerned for Hamlet’s sanity. Laertes—Ophelia’s brother—serves as a dutiful (if somewhat conflicted) friend to Hamlet for much of the film. And while Gertrude did indeed decide to marry Claudius, she clearly cares for her son and tries to protect him when she can.
When Hamlet’s life is nearly snuffed out by some dastardly evildoers, he’s rescued by an unlikely savior named Fortinbras.
In this telling of Hamlet, the title character—and many of the supporting ones—are Hindu. The opening scene depicts Hamlet dabbing yellow paste on his father’s body, a rite that symbolizes purification and the soul’s transition from this life to what follows. (In a bit of cultural foreshadowing, Claudius rinses off much of the paste before his brother’s body is cremated.) During Claudius’ and Gertrude’s wedding banquet, the couple sit underneath a four-pillared canopy called a Mandap (representing the universe and the four stages of life) and Gertrude bears a Bindi on her forehead (a red dot symbolizing, among other things, divine protection).
In one scene, Hamlet stares at a statue of Ganesh, the elephant-headed Hindu god of wisdom, new beginnings and a “remover of obstacles.” He’s a fixture at Hindu weddings, and he’s also invoked at the start of a journey—an apt symbol for Hamlet as his own journey grows darker and bloodier.
But Shakespeare’s original play is speckled with Christian thought, doctrine and symbolism, and most of that remains in this version, too.
For instance, in Shakespeare, Hamlet’s father was murdered without the benefit of confession or last rites, which doomed him to walk the earth for “a certain time.” And while this version eliminates the explicit reference to those Christian rites, the purgatorial aspect of the ghost remains: The ghost tells Hamlet that he must walk the earth “for the foul crimes done in my days of nature” until those sins are “burnt and purged away.”
During Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy, our protagonist muses about heaven and hell and “the undiscovered country” that waits on the other side of death. Hamlet later says that “divinity” shapes our ends, and he references Matthew 10:29-31 when talking about the “special providence in the fall of a sparrow.” We hear references to God as well. Someone is called a witch.
Shakespeare’s spirits are not aligned with Christian doctrine, but they were elements in English folklore and Elizabethan theater during the playwright’s time. They crop up frequently in the Bard’s work—though as this version of Hamlet suggests, they can walk the line between spiritual reality and imagined, psychological manifestation. When Ophelia questions whether Hamlet saw the ghost he thinks he saw, he responds, famously, “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
While Claudius and Gertrude aren’t related by blood, it’s pretty clear that Hamlet considers their impending nuptials incestuous (an opinion that reflected the Elizabethan mores of Shakespeare’s time). He calls out the relationship several times in those terms, and he refers to the couple’s “incestuous sheets.”
Hamlet spends a lot of time acting as though he’s crazy. Before a play during Claudius’ and Gertrude’s wedding banquet, he smears lipstick on his face, dons a dainty headscarf and acts with pantomime effeminacy—joking about states of arousal while using a microphone as a visual aid. (He also makes reference to what lies between “a maid’s legs.”) When someone confronts him about his behavior, Hamlet tries to force the man to touch Hamlet’s crotch.
Hamlet visits a nightclub filled with revelers and buxom, scantily clad dancers (including one in a thong-like getup). Some actors in a play perform without shirts.
It seems obvious from context that Hamlet and Ophelia had a romantic relationship. But that relationship quickly takes a dive when Hamlet is feigning madness: He calls her a “whore” and spurns her affections. “If you do marry, I will give you a plague for a dowery,” Hamlet tells her.
A man is stabbed several times in the neck—blood spurts out of the man’s throat, covering him, his clothes and the carpet in blood. The victim dies from his injuries, and his corpse is dragged from the room, smearing blood across the white floor.
Another man is stabbed in the gut and dies. A character is taken by thugs to be murdered: They beat him, and one of the man’s assailants tries to cut through the man’s wrist—perhaps to murder him and make it look like a suicide—before the victim is rescued from an unexpected quarter. The people who had been doing the beating are beaten in turn and flee the scene. Another character drowns off screen, but we later see the lifeless body.
The ghost of Hamlet’s father says Claudius murdered him by pouring poison in his ear. The method of death is re-enacted in a play: Performers create a funnel from their own hands, through which wine is poured and splashes across another actor’s face. (The actors have painted the palms of their hands red and show them to Claudius, as if pointing out his guilt.) Three others die from poisoned wine: One coughs up red liquid while in the throes of death.
Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy takes place when Hamlet is considering suicide. In this version, Hamlet recites the speech while tearing down the road in his BMW, driving recklessly and, ultimately, letting go of the wheel while driving on the wrong side of the street. He forces a motorcycle driver off the road without a thought. He nearly runs headlong into a semi before grabbing the wheel and turning aside.
Someone slams a woman into a mirror, cracking it, before he in turn is tackled and thrown against a wall. We see the corpse of Hamlet’s father as it’s prepared for cremation—and watch as the coffin is whisked into the crematorium and set alight. A man is forced into a shower and scrubbed free of someone else’s blood.
We hear some violent lines from Shakespeare’s original play including a paraphrase that talks about how someone should’ve “fattened rats with this slave’s offal.”
We hear a few potential misuses of God’s name. We hear “hell” and “damned,” but all referring to their original, spiritual meaning.
If alcohol comes with its share of dangers, that’s especially true in Hamlet—where the wine in question might just be poisoned.
We see other alcoholic drinks at work, too. Characters quaff wine, champagne and other alcoholic beverages. At a nightclub, Hamlet seems to sniff an unseen substance off the back of someone’s hand.
We hear that Claudius “does make love to his employment.” Hamlet is caught snooping through some of his family’s business papers.
To see or not to see? That is the question when considering this lean, mean version of Hamlet.
Certainly, the world is not short on other versions to choose from. The play has been dedicated to film more than 50 times, from Laurence Olivier’s famous 1948 performance to Mel Gibson’s star-studded 1990 flick to Kenneth Branagh’s faithful four-hour take in 1996. But in lifting Shakespeare’s famous play from Denmark to London and casting Oscar-nominated actor Riz Ahmed in its title role, the 2026 version comes with a visual pop and a taut script that makes this version feel immediate, urgent and, because of its contemporary setting, more accessible.
But that immediacy and accessibility cuts both ways. Alas, poor reader, we know this R-rated content well.
Because Shakespeare wrote so long ago, we tend to think of the Bard as not just a classic playwright, but a clean one. Truth is, even his original plays contain ribald asides, grotesque deaths and spiritual murk. And my guess is that, if Shakespeare had access to both a big budget and today’s technology, he’d not shy away from making his audience both blush and squirm.
So perhaps it really shouldn’t surprise that this version of Hamlet leans into R-rated territory. Several people die during the course the story, and one of its victims dies in a particularly gruesome way. The film takes some sequences that might’ve simply struck us as odd when we read the play in high school and turns them into purposefully uncomfortable sexual gags.
And, for Shakespeare purists, we should note that this version takes some liberties with the original play—not just shortening it but altering some important plot points.
This contemporary, culture-shifting version of Hamlet works well. The craftsmanship and outstanding acting help bring Shakespeare’s gorgeous language to life. But the results—especially for families—ain’t so pretty. And for those who might hope to take their kids to get a little Elizabethan culture under their belts, there’s the rub.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
