His Three Daughters Review: Three Sisters, One Apartment, No Escape

Is His Three Daughters good?

Yes — His Three Daughters is a precisely acted chamber drama that earns its acclaim. The numbers back this up: a 98% Critic Score against an 80% Audience Score and an 84 Metascore, with a 4.0 on Letterboxd and a 7.1 on IMDb. That gap between critic and audience numbers isn’t a red flag — it’s a signal that this is a patient, talky film that rewards viewers willing to sit still with difficult people in a small room.

What is His Three Daughters about?

It’s the story of three estranged sisters forced back into the same cramped apartment as their father’s life draws to a close. Writer-director Azazel Jacobs, working in the same intimate register as his earlier films French Exit and The Lovers, keeps the camera almost entirely inside that one apartment as old wounds resurface between the women. What starts as logistics — who handles the paperwork, who sits with him, who called too late — becomes an excavation of decades of resentment, guilt, and love that none of them have ever said out loud.

Should you watch His Three Daughters?

Yes, if you want to watch three great actors work in close quarters rather than a plot that moves. The film’s strength is entirely in performance and dialogue — there are no flashbacks, no subplots, no release valve from the apartment’s tension. That will frustrate viewers who want narrative momentum, which likely explains the softer audience number relative to the critic consensus. But for anyone who enjoys dialogue-driven ensemble work, the sustained discomfort is the reward, not a flaw to tolerate.

How does His Three Daughters compare to August: Osage County?

Both films trap a fractured family inside one house and let old grievances do the work that plot would otherwise do. August: Osage County leans into heightened, near-theatrical confrontation, with shouting matches that peak and recede like a stage play. His Three Daughters is quieter and more controlled — the sisters circle each other rather than explode, and the tension comes from what’s withheld rather than what’s said. Where Osage County uses one matriarch as the gravitational center, Jacobs’ film distributes the weight evenly across three distinct women, none of whom is allowed to become the obvious hero or villain of the story.