H Is For Hawk – Review

Release Date – 23rd January 2026, Cert – 12, Run-time – 1 hour 55 minutes, Director – Philippa Lowthorpe

Helen (Claire Foy) grew up watching for hawks with her father (Brendan Gleeson), after he passes away she buys one. However, as it helps her through grief her connection with the bird starts to isolate her.

It feels odd to refer to a performance such as Claire Foy’s in a drama like H Is For Hawk as joyous. The film itself isn’t joyous, but there are moments of uplift for central figure Helen (Foy) as she develops a bond with the goshawk, named Mabel, she’s bought in the wake of her father’s (Brendan Gleeson) death. In these moments Foy captures a joy which truly gets across the healing that she feels from training Mabel, despite also saying that the bird is of a non-affectionate species.

Yet, the more time Helen spends with Mabel, starting to put her lecturing work at Cambridge and friends and family aside, means that she becomes isolated, and appears ill. Increasingly pale and slightly lost the effects of grief weight more heavily on her, and she appears to know it. Much of this is lifted by Foy giving one of the best performances of her career, and in many ways making the film what it is. Capturing the inheld, unhealthily leaking pain her character feels in the wake of losing her father, with a number of flashbacks to their bond watching for hawks and taking photos together and a slight warmth brought by Gleeson.

Yet, as we see the shifts that Helen goes through in the wake of loss the film can occasionally seem meandering. Yes, there are plenty of nice, and sometimes entrancing, scenes involving Mabel being trained – or some nature-documentary style sequences involving her hunting – but the way the film moves from one point to another can sometimes feel a bit slower than perhaps intended. At just under two hours there is a slight sense of the run-time throughout, even if things do generally manage to move forward smoothly enough to see them through, and with enough engagement throughout.

And while the film can occasionally feel a bit too slow, and at times muted, there’s still an emotionally affecting close. As Helen speaks at her dad’s funeral, photos from both his career as a news photographer and hobbies being projected next to her, I found myself tearing up more than I have done at a good number of other films for quite some time. Perhaps this was solely because of Foy’s performance, which, again, elevates the film and helps to keep engagement as director and co-writer (with Emma Donoghue) Philippa Lowthorpe keeps consistent focus on her, this is her story after all (adapted from the real Helen MacDonald’s autobiographical book of the same name). It’s Helen who keeps us engaged in the events that unfold, largely avoiding a feeling of familiarity. Especially helpful during the film’s quieter and slower moments.

Claire Foy elevates the emotion and overall engagement of H Is For Hawk with one of her best performance to date, helping get over some of the more drawn out and muted moments with a turn focused on by Philippa Lowthorpe that locks into the emotions.