The Littles is continued proof of what I think is the biggest strength of short films. Because a short film doesn’t have an hour and a half or two hours to construct a story. A short film has at maximum 15-30 minutes to draw an audience in and tell a concise, moving, and well thought out story and that’s what The Littles, starring Violet McCraw, did so well.
Before I dive into how McCraw really needs to continue doing horror, I want to talk about the overall story. In The Littles you have a young woman who discovers life underneath the floorboards of her bedroom. And she does this from the perspective of someone who’s the center of the story. And by the end of the short film you come to realize that she might be the villain in someone else’s story.
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Not even 10 minutes long and The Littles manages to lure me into a false sense of security, like I’m watching some sort of fantasy. A fantasy where the young woman discovers life unlike our own but similar in many ways. And they become friends and have adventures and all that stuff. That doesn’t happen here. And the fact that The Littles flips these expectations on its head, made it even more interesting.
I also think that The Littles took a lot of care and time into the simplicity of everything. Nowadays I feel like movies complicate everything. The Littles was very intentional with the lighting, the music, and even the little spark at the end where you realize that this isn’t a tale of discovery. It’s a tale of danger. And you are left at the end of the short film, hoping for more because you were on the cusp of something monumental.
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Then there’s Violet McCraw. A lot of people know her from the M3GAN movies and she most recently played young Yelena in the Thunderbolts*. I knew McCraw from her time as young Nell in The Haunting of Hill House. She was an exemplary actress in the show. And I always felt like she needed to continue doing horror. And she’s doing that in The Littles, while showing that you don’t have to have a movie length script to deliver emotion and make the audience feel something.
Together, The Littles and McGraw made the kind of magic that left me going, what do you mean that’s the end? What do you mean this isn’t a feature film? And that’s always a good thing in my book, especially for a short film. It leaves room for more. And I need more from this.
The Littles premiered at New York Comic-Con 2025.
