SCARLET Review

From the very first frame, Scarlet (2025) announces itself with confidence. The animation is flat-out gorgeous—bold in its color design, fluid in its motion, and constantly finding new ways to make a familiar kind of story feel freshly haunted. And yes, I’m always going to show up for a good revenge tale. Give me a wronged hero(ine), a righteous target, and a world that keeps twisting the knife. I’m in.

What makes Scarlet work as well as it does—when it’s working at full power—is how cleanly it draws the line from innocence to obsession. Our heroine starts as someone you want to protect. Then the film slowly reshapes her into someone you’re not sure you should protect… but you still do. That push-pull is the movie’s core engine. It’s a transformation that’s equal parts beauty and madness, and it lands largely because the voice performance gives it real emotional weight. Mana Ashida anchors Scarlet’s arc with expressive, lived-in feeling—she sells the grief, she sells the rage, and she sells the quieter moments where you can tell Scarlet is starting to disappear inside her own mission.

The film’s smartest choice is taking the revenge narrative and relocating it into fantasy terrain that feels like a myth passed through a fever dream. Scarlet doesn’t just chase vengeance across villages or battlefields—she’s essentially wandering through something like the afterlife, continuing the hunt after failing to get justice in life. That premise alone earns the movie a lot of goodwill, because it immediately opens up the palette: strange guide figures, unsettling landscapes, and supporting characters who feel like they could only exist in a liminal world where rules are flexible and morality is slippery. You can tell the filmmakers wanted to use animation for what it does best—turning emotion into environment.

And visually, it’s a treat. The world has that distinct “Hosoda touch” that’s hard to pin down in one neat adjective. It’s recognizably Japanese animation in its craft and clarity, but there’s also an extra texture to it—almost a rustling, crumbling, slightly askew quality, like the picture is always on the verge of coming apart in the same way Scarlet is. It’s not sloppy; it’s intentional. It gives the film a unique pulse. In a genre space where a lot of animation can feel overly polished or “too perfect,” Scarlet has edges. Personality. A little dirt under the nails. I like that.

The story structure, though… that’s where the film starts to fight itself.

Because underneath the gorgeous fantasy dress-up, the narrative is basically a Hamlet-adjacent blueprint. Dead father. Stolen power. Child turned avenger trying to reclaim what’s “rightfully” theirs. Even if the film doesn’t slap the label on it, you feel those bones immediately. And there’s nothing wrong with using a classic framework—plenty of great movies are built on familiar scaffolding. The issue is that Scarlet occasionally leans on that familiarity like a crutch instead of using it as a springboard.

That’s why the pacing gets wobbly.

The first 30 minutes are strong—clean setup, strong emotional hook, great visual worldbuilding. The final 30 minutes bring the heat again, delivering the intensity and payoff you can feel the movie promising from the jump. But that middle stretch drags. It has that “we have to hit the beats” feeling, where the journey starts to feel like a sequence of story stations rather than a spiraling descent. The film keeps introducing ideas and obstacles, but not all of them deepen Scarlet’s psychology or raise the stakes in a meaningful way. Sometimes it’s just… more road before we get to the destination we already know we’re heading toward.

And when the movie slows down, you start noticing the misfires more.

The biggest one for me is the comic relief. There are a handful of moments where the film tries to lighten the mood, and it doesn’t feel organic to the tone that

Scarlet is otherwise building. It’s the kind of humor that reads like a studio note: “Hey, make sure the kids don’t get too sad.” The problem is, the film’s emotional atmosphere is one of its greatest strengths—this heavy, eerie, grief-soaked fantasy. When you drop a few jokey beats into that stew, it doesn’t come off charming. It comes off distracting. In most cases, it pulled me out of scenes that should’ve stayed tense or mournful. If you’re going to break tension in a revenge story, you better do it with precision. Here, it’s a little too clumsy.

That said, I walked away impressed—maybe even more impressed than I expected to be—because the film’s best qualities are real. There’s genuine imagination in the setting. There’s a committed central performance. And there’s an emotional throughline that remains easy to grab onto, even when the pacing starts asking for patience. Scarlet is the kind of protagonist you can’t stop watching. Even when the story stalls, she doesn’t. Her drive is the movie’s gravity.

Aside from Mirai (2018), I’m not as deep into Hosoda's filmography as some people are, but between that and this, the appeal is clear. There’s a sensitivity to emotion paired with a willingness to go visually strange. Scarlet feels like an artist aiming for something mythic and personal at the same time—sometimes it clicks beautifully, sometimes it gets bogged down in structure, but the voice is there.

In the end, my main wish is simple: tighten it up. Trim some of that middle. Keep the detours that reveal character or deepen theme, and let the rest go. Because the film absolutely knows how to begin, and it absolutely knows how to end. It just takes the scenic route a few too many times getting between those two points.

Still, if you let yourself attach to Scarlet—and you’re willing to ride out a slower midsection—the payoff is worth it. Even when the story is familiar, the film’s visuals and emotional commitment give it a bite. It’s a revenge tale with genuine style, and that counts for a lot.

🍿 SCORE = 72 / 100