Hedda
Amazon MGM Studios | Release Date: October 22, 2025 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
70
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 34 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
8
Negative:
2

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The New York TimesNatalia WinkelmanOct 30, 2025
While DaCosta’s intelligence as a writer and director makes Hedda a standout film, her penchant for play makes it a delightful one. Read full review
100
The Film MavenKristen LopezOct 3, 2025
Hedda is one of the year's best movies with Thompson nothing short of wondrous. Read full review
92
TheWrapWilliam BibbianiOct 23, 2025
A sensual, ingenious update of Ibsen’s classic play, honoring the grand theatrical tradition and transforming it into new, ecstatic cinema. Read full review
90
VarietyPeter DebrugeOct 31, 2025
Not everyone knows Ibsen going in, but that needn’t diminish the satisfaction of watching “Hedda Gabler” so vividly reinvented. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesAmy NicholsonOct 23, 2025
With apologies to Ibsen’s ghost, DaCosta’s tweaks have sharpened its rage. I don’t think that long-dead critic would like this “Hedda” any better. I think it’s divine. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterJourdain SearlesSep 11, 2025
Hedda is a delightful, sexy ride made that reminds us that Thompson is a star and DaCosta has many more tricks up her sleeve. It’s good to hear her unique narrative voice again. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldOct 30, 2025
There’s more going on here than pretty pictures: This fascinating portrait of a lady has ice and steel at its core. Read full review
88
The Associated PressLindsey BahrOct 20, 2025
It’s a subtle, affecting portrait of relapse, punctured by a wildly cruel embarrassment that is brilliantly staged and executed. Read full review
87
The Daily BeastNick SchagerOct 22, 2025
Even at its stagiest, it’s a film that, courtesy of both its director and star, burns with unbridled passions. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubNatalia KeoganOct 23, 2025
Simply put, there is nothing polite about Hedda—adultery, drug use, and suicide are all integral to the story—but the grit beneath the opulent glamour of this estate is what makes spending an extended evening within its walls so exciting. Read full review
83
The PlaylistChase HutchinsonSep 13, 2025
It’s a film where every detail of the craft is worth taking in even when the story starts to lose steam a bit towards the end. Read full review
83
IndieWireKate ErblandSep 9, 2025
Hedda’s magnetism is undeniable, and that people would be under her thrall is understandable. DaCosta and a talented team of craftspeople bolster that idea at every turn. Read full review
80
Little White LiesLeila LatifOct 24, 2025
At its heart is Tessa Thompson, giving a performance so commanding that it seems to reshape the molecules around her. Her Hedda is poised and sensual with a magnetism that affects virtually every interaction. The glance is a seduction and the lightest curled lip becomes a threat, with DaCosta trusting her leading lady to convey the power of this woman in silent, lingering close-ups. Read full review
80
EmpireAmon WarmannOct 24, 2025
Tessa Thompson has never been better as the titular not-so-desperate housewife in Nia DaCosta’s bold, stylish reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s timeless play. Read full review
80
The New YorkerRichard BrodyOct 17, 2025
In DaCosta’s hands, Ibsen’s emotionally extreme but tonally restrained play becomes a spectacular, flamboyant melodrama, with physical action as intense as the characters’ inner worlds. Read full review
80
Next Best PictureEma SasicSep 9, 2025
Tessa Thompson and Nina Hoss are electrifying and seductive, and you can't take your eyes off them. Nia DaCosta puts her flair all over this retelling. Read full review
75
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenNov 6, 2025
Hoss (so riveting in Christian Petzold’s Phoenix) gives the strongest performance, arriving at the party with a goddess-like superiority that Hedda tragically chips away at as the night proceeds. Though not without a riveting fight. Read full review
75
Washington PostNaveen KumarNov 3, 2025
There is a ritualistic, even tribal, quality to DaCosta’s telling that suggests a truth to the story untethered to time or place: Any woman confined like Hedda is will strive to escape, one way or another. Read full review
75
The Travers TakePeter TraversOct 24, 2025
Even when her movie spins and lurches, the sensational Tessa Thompson blows the dust off a classic Ibsen play to find its queer defiant heart Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJohn AndersonOct 31, 2025
There is no reason to adapt an existing work without doing something new, and Ms. DaCosta does plenty, though much of the updating shows how truly groundbreaking Ibsen was. And how little ground is left to break. Read full review
70
Screen RantGraeme GuttmannSep 9, 2025
DaCosta makes some key changes to the ending of this story that slightly undermine its more subversive inclinations, but that doesn't make the film any less effective. Her confident direction and Sean Bobbitt's lush cinematography make Hedda an electrifying adaptation that relishes the chaos as much as its characters, even as blood, bullets, and booze continue to fly. Read full review
67
Paste MagazineJesse HassengerOct 24, 2025
Hedda is DaCosta’s most direct and purposeful adaptation yet, but like her other films, it’s missing some ineffable push past its beginnings into more expressive territory. The process of adaptation feels more confident than the conclusion. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineDavid RobbNov 1, 2025
Tessa Thompson's presence is captivating, as she relishes in exploring her character's gleeful and occasionally anxious villainy. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comMarya E. GatesSep 8, 2025
The film largely feels like an echo of something that was once great, a bit like the dilapidated manor in which the party takes place, and can’t quite reach the height of its own ambition. Read full review
60
Rolling StoneDavid FearOct 29, 2025
The question posed by this impressive, if somewhat overheated take on a theater-canon staple is not, in the end, “What curse is it that makes everything I touch turn ludicrous and mean?” It’s more like: Why kill when you can overkill? Read full review
60
ColliderRoss BonaimeOct 28, 2025
As Ibsen’s play has shown, even a century after its writing, this is still a story with life in it, and DaCosta’s take modernizes it in deft ways. However, the questionable way DaCosta's film goes about it doesn’t do the story justice, making this a party that fizzles out long before the last guest has left. Read full review
60
Time OutElizabeth WeitzmanOct 23, 2025
There is so much talent behind and within Nia DaCosta’s provocative adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler that it’s easy to embrace as an inventive artistic experiment. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawOct 22, 2025
This is a movie whose absurdities need to be indulged. Read full review
50
TimeStephanie ZacharekOct 22, 2025
If you’re not already familiar with the play, you may find yourself a little lost in Hedda—or perhaps just bored. Read full review
50
Screen DailyTim GriersonSep 9, 2025
Unfortunately, no matter the initial electricity DaCosta brings to the material, the crackle gradually starts to wane, the momentum diluted by extraneous subplots and slack pacing. Read full review
40
The TimesKevin MaherOct 23, 2025
There’s only one thing worse than being trapped in a theatre watching a badly staged play: being trapped in a cinema watching a badly adapted stage play. And so it is, frequently, with this Ibsen update that’s pulled in too many directions at once by its ambitious director, Nia DaCosta, and the producer-star Tessa Thompson. Read full review
40
The GuardianRichard LawsonSep 9, 2025
It’s an impressive feat of technical film-making, which has now become a hallmark of DaCosta’s work. But she caves to baser impulses in reinterpreting an old and, some might say, crusty play. Read full review
38
ObserverSiddhant AdlakhaSep 17, 2025
Based on Henrik Ibsen’s classic stage play Hedda Gabler, Nia DaCosta’s Hedda seeks to reinterpret and modernize the late 19th-century material. However, in the process, it loosens the nuts and bolts of Ibsen’s dramaturgical machine, causing it to ricket until it falls apart. Read full review
30
IONCINEMA.comKevin JagernauthOct 23, 2025
An audience’s mileage for Hedda will depend on how much they enjoy watching what is little more than a parlour game between the pampered upper classes. Read full review
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