The Little Things (2021)
Directed by John Lee Hancock
Deputy Sheriff Joe "Deke" Deacon joins forces with Sgt. Jim Baxter to search for a serial killer who's terrorizing Los Angeles. As they track the culprit, Baxter is unaware that the investigation is dredging up echoes of Deke's past, uncovering disturbing secrets that could threaten more than his case.
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30 films that influenced The Little Things
What critics say influenced The Little Things
Think of the early to late-1990s/early-aughts heyday of such cop-saviour fantasies as Kiss the Girls, The Glimmer Man, The Watcher, Washington’s own The Bone Collector and Fallen, or Se7en (but without David Fincher’s nihilistic themes and uncompromising aesthetic).
You know the one’s, the kind of movie that hit its popular apex with The Silence of the Lambs , followed by a boatload of bad knockoffs until David Fincher refined and eventually perfected the genre with Se7en and Zodiac .
Written and directed by John Lee Hancock (see “The Blind Side” and the locally shot “The Founder”), “The Little Things” will be inevitably compared to David Fincher’s “Se7en.”
We’ve since seen the same concept done better in masterpieces such as “Se7en” (1995), “Zodiac” (2007) and “Prisoners” (2013).
What could have been an interesting film turns out to be nothing more than a lackluster Se7en rip-off.
To be fair, before watching the film, I was pretty excited to delve back into the vibe of Se7en and myriad other serial killer movies of the 1990s, Hollywood projects aping The Silence of the Lambs while reacting to the age of grunge and Dahmer and Marilyn Manson.
The opening scene in the midnight-dark, period piece serial killer thriller “The Little Things” feels like a lift from a certain segment in “The Silence of the Lambs,” as if to acknowledge we’re in for a derivative thrill ride — and though writer-director John Lee Hancock actually penned the original screenplay for this psychological crime noir some 30 years ago, in terms of visual style and mood it reminded me of “Lambs,” with echoes of such works as “L.A. Confidential” and David Fincher’s “Seven” and “Zodiac.”
You know the one’s, the kind of movie that hit its popular apex with The Silence of the Lambs , followed by a boatload of bad knockoffs until David Fincher refined and eventually perfected the genre with Se7en and Zodiac .
It is not a great movie, although it reminds me of a couple: “Seven” and “Zodiac,” two gritty David Fincher classics that clearly influenced Hancock’s film.
While the movie’s generic kinship with the much-grislier “Seven” is obvious, it also seems to echo — or anticipate, depending on how you look at it — the lingering chill of a superior David Fincher serial-killer thriller, “Zodiac” (2007).
We’ve since seen the same concept done better in masterpieces such as “Se7en” (1995), “Zodiac” (2007) and “Prisoners” (2013).
It’s a total Zodiac vibe as the unseen stranger forces her off the road, and is preparing to murder her, but she fortunately is able to run away and is saved by a passing truck.
The opening scene in the midnight-dark, period piece serial killer thriller “The Little Things” feels like a lift from a certain segment in “The Silence of the Lambs,” as if to acknowledge we’re in for a derivative thrill ride — and though writer-director John Lee Hancock actually penned the original screenplay for this psychological crime noir some 30 years ago, in terms of visual style and mood it reminded me of “Lambs,” with echoes of such works as “L.A. Confidential” and David Fincher’s “Seven” and “Zodiac.”
You know the one’s, the kind of movie that hit its popular apex with The Silence of the Lambs , followed by a boatload of bad knockoffs until David Fincher refined and eventually perfected the genre with Se7en and Zodiac .
In many ways, it feels like a script that’s been collecting dust since the ’90s, recalling crime thrillers of its era such as “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991).
To be fair, before watching the film, I was pretty excited to delve back into the vibe of Se7en and myriad other serial killer movies of the 1990s, Hollywood projects aping The Silence of the Lambs while reacting to the age of grunge and Dahmer and Marilyn Manson.
It wants to play in the same space as 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs , 1995’s Seven , and even lesser titles like 1999’s Washington vehicle The Bone Collector .
Think of the early to late-1990s/early-aughts heyday of such cop-saviour fantasies as Kiss the Girls, The Glimmer Man, The Watcher, Washington’s own The Bone Collector and Fallen, or Se7en (but without David Fincher’s nihilistic themes and uncompromising aesthetic).
And so the stalwart star officially surpasses Morgan Freeman — you know, Kiss the Girls and GOAT serial-killer thriller Seven — as the king of this broody genre.
Titles like Fallen , Kiss the Girls , The Bone Collector , Taking Lives , and Suspect Zero , just to name a few.
And it wasn’t just written in 1990, it still feels like it could’ve been made then, too — an unambiguous positive at a time when most straight-to-streaming fare is so cheap and glossy that it makes 20th century shlock like “Kiss the Girls” and “The Bone Collector” feel like Visconti movies by comparison.
The goal is to capture thrilling and pulpy mystery’s such as Kiss the Girls or other various Alex Cross cases.
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And you’ve really seen the rest of the movie before — almost literally, since “The Little Things,” written and directed by John Lee Hancock (“The Blind Side,” “Saving Mr. Banks”), is a serial-killer procedural that would like to be “Se7en,” with a great many touches lifted from “Manhunter,” but it plays more like a not-so-very-special episode of “C.S.I.”
In fact, the first half of the movie fails at trying to be a mix between "Seven" and "Manhunter" with its gruesome crime scenes and the skilled detective character, who sees all the angles.
For anyone who pines for the days of “Manhunter,” “Silence of the Lambs” and “Se7en,” “The Little Things” is like a warm blanket of, you know, morgue forensics, grisly crime scenes and serial killer mania.
Washington is delightful to watch in full “Manhunter” mode, but it lacks punch because so much of his identity and history is played very close to the vest.
It reminded me of John Cazale in the mirrored van in The Conversation .
We’ve since seen the same concept done better in masterpieces such as “Se7en” (1995), “Zodiac” (2007) and “Prisoners” (2013).
I’d say The Little Things runs closer to Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners instead.
While the lack of closure isn’t close to what it was in John Sayles’ Limbo (which caused movie-goers to throw things at the screen in normally staid art houses), it will cause consternation.
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Taking a page from George Sluizer’s 1988 Dutch stunner The Vanishing , the story heads to an almost entirely unexpected location, making the ambiguity of Sparma’s malevolent intentions as they pertain to Deke and Baxter a catalyst to an even more insidiously cataclysmic self-administered tragedy.
Think of Anthony Hopkins’ turn in James Ivory’s “The Remains of the Day” (1993), as Stevens (Hopkins) – a loyal butler – always swallows his feelings, despite the potential for love (Emma Thompson) standing right in front of him and his employer appeasing the Nazi Party.