‘Little Death’ Review – What Happens When Audacity Fails Story [Sundance 2024]

Little Death is two movies in one, united by a dog.

The film opens on the deeply unfulfilled life of Martin (David Schwimmer), a television writer who desperately wants to break out of the monotony of sub-par comedy and write something meaningful. Martin’s midlife crisis is enhanced by a complicated cocktail of prescription drugs and his relationship with his fiancee, who also doesn’t seem to like him very much. His malaise of being a middle-aged white man in Hollywood is disrupted when he meets a mysterious young actress who haunts his dreams. He looks ready to toss his entire meager existence out the window when fate intervenes. That fate shifts the film into its second phase, where Karla (Talia Ryder) and AJ (Dominic Fike), two drug-addled Gen Zers seeking to start a taco truck business, end up with Martin’s dog and embark on a journey to recover their stolen stuff after their car is stolen.

To be fair, there is more connecting Martin and the taco truck kids than a dog. Jack Begert’s film seeks to say something about life in Los Angeles and how drugs can undercut ambition. The idea is inherently interesting, but the film asks a lot of its audience to get there. We first must get through Martin’s story, which is ruthlessly disengaging and tedious. The script seems disinterested in establishing Martin as more than morose and self-involved, and the lack of engagement practically encourages the audience to graft Ross Geller onto the man on screen. (You can imagine this is what happens after Rachel leaves Ross, again, and absconds with Emma to Milan.) It doesn’t help that Begert uses real-life footage of Schwimmer on red carpets and interviews in his fever-dream sequences meant to reflect Martin’s mental instability. 

Arguably, the marquee feature of Little Death is its use of AI-generated art throughout Martin’s section of the film. Ethics notwithstanding, the usage of AI art amounts to occasionally interesting-looking but mostly confounding visuals. If it’s meant to represent the contrasting creative genius and psychological turmoil inside Martin, the script undercuts the purpose, as it doesn’t suggest that Martin is anything more than mediocre. The film dips its toe into the accompanying implications, but its uncritical defense of Martin’s mediocrity further separates us from him. The story fails Schwimmer, too, who spent a decade finding the charm in the “sad sack” archetype. He is staggeringly unappealing here, emanating miserable vibes in every shot with nothing to draw us in. Schwimmer has a brief moment to showcase why audiences fell in love with him 30 years ago, but it quickly vanishes into more tedious hemming about dissatisfaction.

If you stick with Little Death after David Schwimmer fades into the background and Talia Ryder and Dominic Fike take over, you’ll encounter a significant reset. Gone are the audiovisual abstractions and dull meandering, and in its place is a fairly chill, straightforward late-night jaunt through the LA suburbs, where pills and bad decisions are abundant. The film evokes a more laid-back Euphoria, where instead of actively wrecking each other’s lives, the young people do an indiscriminate amount of drugs and race pigs in the backyard. While there is some meandering, there is an end goal that lends the story some urgency. Karla and AJ are fuller characters with compelling motivations and desires that undergird their disaffected airs. Fike and Ryder give great performances that feel natural and quietly profound as they convey their frustrations at not getting their lives together and their steadfast friendship.

There is no question that Little Death is daring in its construction. It links two disparate stories with a shared pet and challenges audiences to find the common thematic threads under the surface. It is also audacious in its visual language, posing uncomfortable but worthy questions about the value and validity of AI-generated art. Unfortunately, Begert’s structural audacity isn’t in service to its story or two. A decent story within Little Death is buried behind a tedious one. If the intent is to test its audience’s patience in this attention-starved cultural economy, the film succeeds splendidly.

It still can’t help feeling like a bridge too far.

Little Death had its World Premiere in the NEXT section of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

Director: Jack Begert

Writers: Jack Begert, Dani Goffstein

Rated: NR

Runtime: 110m