The Little Things stars Denzel Washngton as old chiseled cop Deke, Rami Malek as young upcoming Detective Baxter, and Jared Leto as Albert Sparma. 

Deputy Sheriff Deke joins forces with Baxter to try and catch a serial killer who’s terrorizing women across LA.

Anytime a new serial killer movie is announced it climbs into my most anticipated movies of that year. Especially when you have three academy award nominees all playing off each other on screen. 

My only concern was how a film that was supposed to head straight to theatres would translate to a streaming release. On that front it did a phenomenal job, sound editing was great, the score was subtle but perfectly fit the tone of the film, cinematography and color grading really popped.

Rami Malek’s Detective Baxter and Denzel Washington’s Deke had great chemistry and did a great job of convincing us that these two could actually work together on a case. Jared Leto was really good, don’t get me wrong, but they’re are certain points where he tends to overact and take all the tension out of the scene.. Leto is at his best when he’s doing skin crawling scenes, whether that’s just him sneaking around in the dark or delivering his lines in the most montone and creepy way possible. When they give Leto’s character a more monologue type to his delivery it tends to be more goofy and takes you out of the scene, which isn’t the fault of Leto, but more the script. 

What’s going to divide audiences the most is the polarizing ending.The ending doesn’t hit as hard as it should because of the lack of development towards Detective Baxter, and then the film goes a complete 360 and pulls out another twist which in my book is unnecessary and would have been better just leaving a few loose strings to think about after the film.  

The Little Things is like a cover song to one of your favorites, not as good or unique as the stuff that came before like Se7en, Zodiac, and Gone Girl, but is still a solid thriller with great performances, worth checking out on HBO Max.

Grade: B