The Little Things

[Frank Cox]

The events in The Little Things take place in 1990 (according to the caption at the start) and it really looks like a 1990's detective-hunts-serial-killer movie. It's trying to go for the atmosphere, tension and overall creepiness of a movie like Kiss the Girls or Seven and while the effort and the elements are there, it doesn't quite make it.

It's not a bad movie but it's not a great one either. It's ok and I've certainly played movies that are nowhere near as good as this one is. I found the ending rather unsatisfying. It's definitely a suitable ending for a neo-noir movie but it didn't really work for me because, again, it just didn't succeed in establishing the atmosphere.

Ultimately, it isn't a waste of time to watch but it's not something to go far out of your way to find either.

[Mike Blakesley]

It seems mis-titled. "The Little Things" sounds like a romantic comedy.

[Bobby Henderson]

I watched "The Little Things" on HBO Max this past weekend. I'm glad I watched the movie at home, because I would have been pissed if I had paid first run ticket money for that show.

In screenwriting class (or pretty much any creative writing class) the instructor will likely say at some point, "a story has three things: a beginning, a middle and an end." This movie doesn't really have an ending. It starts off fairly suspenseful and promising. But after the opening title card it just kind of slowly goes downhill from there.

Part of the problem is that the story clearly establishes a serial killer. One that obviously needs to be caught. We see the killer's car at a few points during the movie. We see flashbacks of victims at crime scenes. So we get the sense that this is going to lead to something. But the story wanders off in another direction trying to do something "clever." There's all sorts of backstory hints about certain characters. The movie ends up being really ho-hum by the time "all is revealed" -or rather what we get to see revealed. Some other tid bits are just left hanging.

The movie has other moments I found impossibly stupid and completely implausible. A good movie will kind of pull you into the story where you get "immersed." Stupid moments do the exact opposite.

I had to remind myself this movie was a January release. Far too often movies released in January tend to suck. Same goes for April and August.