Netflix picked up Enola Holmes after the COVID-19 pandemic closed theaters, and the film landed on the service on September 23, 2020. Harry Bradbeer directed it from a screenplay by Jack Thorne, working from the first novel in Nancy Springer’s The Enola Holmes Mysteries series. Millie Bobby Brown plays the title role: the teenage sister of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, raised by her mother to be clever, strong-willed and difficult to marry off.
The tagline is “Mystery runs in the family.” The film runs 124 minutes.
Trailer, via Netflix.
A Sixteenth Birthday and an Empty House
Enola is the youngest child in the Holmes family. Her mother Eudoria, played by Helena Bonham Carter, taught her chess, jujitsu and how to defy the social norms set for women of the time. On her sixteenth birthday, Enola wakes to find her mother gone, leaving behind only some gifts.
A week later she meets her older brothers. Sherlock, played by Henry Cavill, finds her intelligent. Mycroft, played by Sam Claflin, finds her troublesome. As her legal guardian, Mycroft intends to send her to a finishing school run by Miss Harrison, an old friend of his, played by Fiona Shaw.
Enola does not go. The flower cards her mother left carry secret messages and lead to hidden money. She uses it to escape, disguised as a boy.
Linthorn, the Brown Bowler Hat and a Train
On the train Enola finds the young Viscount Tewkesbury, played by Louis Partridge, hidden in a travel bag. She thinks he is a nincompoop. She also warns him that a man in a brown bowler hat named Linthorn, played by Burn Gorman, is on the train searching for him.
Linthorn finds them and tries to kill Tewkesbury. Tewkesbury escapes with Enola by jumping off the train. He forages for edible plants and fungi. They return to London and part ways.
Dressed as a Victorian lady, Enola keeps tracing Eudoria, leaving cryptic messages in the newspaper personal advertisements. She finds pamphlets and a safehouse containing explosives. She learns her mother is part of a radical group of suffragettes. Linthorn attacks her, interrogates her about Tewkesbury, then tries to kill her. Enola fights back, ignites the explosives in the safehouse and escapes.
She decides to find Tewkesbury again, to save him from Linthorn. She visits the Tewkesbury estate and meets his grandmother, the Dowager, played by Frances de la Tour. Mycroft has Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard, played by Adeel Akhtar, search for her.
What Brown Does With a Camera
Enola breaks the fourth wall, talking directly to the audience. That is the film’s load-bearing choice, and Brown carries it. She is in nearly every scene and the device only works because she never asks for sympathy she has not earned. A lesser performance would turn the asides into a tic.
The rest of the cast is doing quieter work. Cavill plays Sherlock as a man who is interested in his sister rather than threatened by her, which is a smaller and better choice than the role invites. Bonham Carter is off screen for most of the running time, and the film feels her absence the way Enola does.
Bradbeer keeps the mystery moving without letting it get heavy. The plot is a chain of errands — the flower cards, the safehouse, the estate — and it holds together well enough to carry a teenager through London and out the other side.
The Holmes Family, Sorted
The film sets three siblings against each other, and the differences are the engine of the story. Here is how they line up.
| Character | Actor | Role in the family | Position on Enola |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mycroft Holmes | Sam Claflin | Eldest sibling, government employee, legal guardian | Wants her sent to a finishing school |
| Sherlock Holmes | Henry Cavill | Second-eldest, renowned private detective | Finds her intelligent |
| Enola Holmes | Millie Bobby Brown | Youngest sibling, raised by Eudoria | Wants to find her mother |
The table is the whole argument of the first act. Mycroft has the law on his side and no idea what to do with her. Sherlock has no authority over her and all the respect. Enola has neither, which is why she runs.
A Franchise That Started Here
Netflix has reason to be pleased with this one. Enola Holmes became one of the most-watched original Netflix film releases, with an estimated 76 million households watching over its first four weeks. A sequel, Enola Holmes 2, arrived on Netflix on November 4, 2022. A third film, Enola Holmes 3, was released on July 1, 2026.
That is a real run for a film that never got its planned theatrical release. Warner Bros. Pictures had intended a cinematic release. The pandemic took the distribution rights to Netflix instead, and the movie found the audience the theater might not have given it.
The reviews were positive, and Brown’s performance drew the praise. The published critical score sits at 6.8 out of 10, with a Metacritic mark of 68 out of 100.
Where the Film Actually Stands
Enola Holmes is a good film with a clear center and a soft middle. Brown is the center. The mystery is the soft part.
The plot keeps promising a conspiracy that threatens the country, and what it delivers is a missing mother with a cause and a runaway lord with a grandmother. Both are worth caring about. Neither is worth the scale the film keeps gesturing at. The safehouse explosives are the one moment the stakes match the talk, and the film moves past it quickly.
The fourth-wall device is the thing that will date or endure. It works here because Enola is telling her own story and the story is about a girl deciding who gets to narrate her life. That is a real idea, and the film knows it. It also uses the device to skip past scenes it would rather not stage, which is a habit a sequel can lean on too hard.
The comparison that matters is not Enola against Sherlock. It is Enola against the version of this film that plays it straight. A Victorian mystery with a teenage girl at the center, told without the asides, would be a smaller and more ordinary movie. The asides are what make it hers.
What holds up is the family. Mycroft is not a villain, just a man with the law and no imagination. Sherlock is not a rival, just a brother who notices. Eudoria is not a martyr, just a woman with a cause who left before she was caught. Enola is the only one of them who has to move, and the film is smart enough to let her.
The score is 6.8 of 10. It is a solid start to a series, and the series got three films out of it. The first one is worth the 124 minutes. The next two have a higher bar to clear, because Brown already cleared this one.
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