Box office The Little Things grossed $15.3 million in the United States and Canada, and $15.5 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $30.8 million. It ended up debuting to $4.8 million from 2,171 theaters, topping the box office; 55% of the audience was male, while 80% were over the age of 25. Internationally, the film grossed $2.8 million from 18 markets for a worldwide start of $7.6 million. The film remained atop the box office both domestically and abroad in its second weekend, with $2.1 million and $1.4 million, respectively. The film made $2.4 million over its third weekend, the four-day
President's Day slate, and was dethroned by holdover
The Croods: A New Age, then made $1.2 million in its fourth weekend.
Critical response On
review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 44% of 266 critics gave the film a positive review with an average rating of 5.4/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "An exceptionally well-cast throwback thriller,
The Little Things will feel deeply familiar to genre fans -- for better and for worse." On
Metacritic, it holds a weighted average score of 54 out of 100 based on 48 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by
CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale, and
PostTrak reported 67% of filmgoers gave the film a positive score, with 40% saying they would definitely recommend it. David Rooney of
The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "If the director's generally taut original screenplay settles on an ending too cryptic to be fully satisfying, the performances of Denzel Washington and Rami Malek as cops from the old school and the new who end up having more in common than they anticipated supply enough glue to hold everything together. Add in Jared Leto as the taunting weirdo who becomes their prime suspect in a series of brutal murders, and you have a suspenseful crime thriller with a dark allure." Writing for
The Globe and Mail, Barry Hertz gave the film two and a half out of four stars, explaining, "Hancock keeps the action moving briskly and with little tonal confusion, highlighting just what a polished studio-favoured professional can do when given gobs of money and zero intellectual-property obligations. And his trio of leading men are all given ample space to play to their strengths." Benjamin Lee of
The Guardian gave the film two out of five stars, specifying, "at a time when even small-screen procedurals have perma-frowned detectives who spend more time haunted by their past than actually solving crimes in the present, it all feels a little too familiar and a little too minor." Writing for
RogerEbert.com, Brian Tallerico gave the film two out of four stars, and said, "It feels like Hancock is trying to tell a very
True Detective story—one about how a case can pull the people investigating it apart from the inside in a way that breaks them forever—but he can't figure out how to shape that into an intriguing mystery simultaneously." Nick Schager of
The Daily Beast wrote, "The ghost of
Seven lives on with
The Little Things, as does Denzel Washington's search for the type of great serial killer thriller he missed out on when he turned down the lead role in
David Fincher's 1995 genre classic. John Lee Hancock's film [...] is deeply indebted in both style and plot particulars to that predecessor, although unfortunately for it—and its headliner—its modest suspense is largely offset by the fact that there's nothing substantial or especially original lurking beneath its eerie exterior."
Accolades Leto was nominated for
Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture at the
78th Golden Globe Awards and
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role at the
27th Screen Actors Guild Awards.
The Little Things won Best Drama Poster at the 2021
Golden Trailer Awards. ==References==