Family Secrets, Splinters, and Shadows

Read Time:4 Minute, 54 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
The Littles
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Genre: Horror, Stop-Motion Short
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 7 minutes
Director(s): Andrew Duplessie
Writer(s): Andrew Duplessie
Cast: Violet McGraw, Janel Parrish, Dominic Sherwood
Where to Watch: premieres October 11, 2025, at New York Comic Con

RAVING REVIEW: THE LITTLES is a short film that proves you don’t need sprawling mythology or elaborate dialogue to leave an impression. (Although I have nothing to confirm this with, I couldn’t stop thinking that this was a horror homage to the 80s animated series THE LITTLES) At only seven minutes long, it takes a deceptively simple event—a child stubbing her toe on a loose floorboard—and transforms it into a portal to a stranger, more unsettling world. With just one spoken line of dialogue, the film demands that atmosphere, visuals, and sound shoulder the full weight of the story. That gamble pays off.

Andrew Duplessie, serving as both writer and director, built the short around a strikingly simple idea: what if horror felt tactile again? The decision to commit fully to stop-motion and practical builds rather than computer-generated effects makes the film’s world eerily persuasive. Every puppet, prop, and set was meticulously crafted by hand, including miniature beds and chairs. The result is a work where you can almost sense the fingerprints on every frame.

The stop-motion, overseen by veteran animator Anthony Scott, brings a disjointed grace to the creatures beneath the boards. Their movements, slightly too jerky and deliberate, feel like the difference between a natural blink and a stare that lasts too long. That uncanny cadence, achieved frame by frame, is something no digital shortcut could convincingly replicate. Scott’s long career in stop-motion classics comes through in the confidence of movement and staging. Even in the span of a few seconds, the puppets convey menace through the smallest tilt of a head or twitch of a hand.

Cinematographer Gary Long leans into texture, letting wood grain, dust, and shadows shape the mood. The glow that seeps through the cracks becomes the short’s most potent image—a visual lure that draws both protagonist and audience deeper into danger. It’s photographed with restraint, never overselling the light but allowing it to function like a siren call.

Editing by Justin Li maintains a steady grip on pacing. The film wastes no time, setting up Juliet’s discovery with clarity before pivoting into unease. What stands out is Li’s refusal to overcut. Instead, he lingers just long enough on moments of stillness, forcing you to search the frame for movement, which often arrives just as your guard lowers.

Sound design is where THE LITTLES achieves some of its most lasting effects. Designed by Eugenio Battaglia, the soundscape is intimate and unnerving, built from the creaks of boards, the scratch of something unseen, and the suffocating quiet of a house that suddenly feels too alive. Composer Cornel Wilczek adds to that unease with a score that blurs darker tones with sharper, more sinister edges. The music feels less like accompaniment and more like something pulsing out from the house itself.

Katy Strutz’s puppet work is perhaps the short’s greatest triumph. The creatures are expressive but never comforting; their proportions slightly skewed, triggering an instinctive discomfort. Light clings to them, enhancing their presence as living, breathing inhabitants of the tiny world. They don’t need to move much to unsettle—just existing in the same frame as Juliet is enough.

As for performances, Violet McGraw carries the short with ease. Her sense of curiosity is genuine, her fear unforced. The choice to center the story on her perspective makes the horror more immediate. Janel Parrish and Dominic Sherwood have limited screen time, but they ground the piece as parental presences, while the film wisely reserves most of its attention for Juliet’s encounter.

THE LITTLES touches on family and trust—two groups colliding across a hidden boundary. It also explores the concept of authenticity: what is real, what is fabricated, and how much of what we fear stems from the fact that we can physically interact with it. The short thrives on ambiguity, resisting the temptation to explain everything. By ending on a note of suggestion rather than resolution, it ensures the imagery lingers long after its brief runtime.

At its core, THE LITTLES is a love letter to handmade cinema at a time when so much feels disposable. Its reliance on physical craft gives it not only visual weight but substance. This is horror as presence: the sense that something in the house really did shift, that the floorboards may creak again tonight.

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[photo courtesy of CAVE ROCK PUBLISHING]

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