Littermates (2026)

I normally struggle with slow-burn movies, especially when they spend most of their runtime holding back the answers. Littermates managed to keep me engaged anyway, mostly because I spent so much of it trying to figure out exactly what I was watching and whether I should trust the person seemingly keeping everyone safe.

I went in knowing almost nothing, which was probably the best way to see it. From the moment Chester takes Liam and Mel in, I kept waiting for the turn. He seems helpful, patient and oddly wise for someone who doesn’t appear dramatically older than either of them, which only made me more suspicious. I spent much of the movie trying to decide whether he was genuinely protecting them or whether something more sinister was hiding underneath, and that uncertainty became one of the movie’s strongest hooks.

The more interesting part is watching Liam and Mel essentially move through childhood again in adult bodies. Joey Bader and Kaylee McGregor completely sell that regression without turning it into a joke. Liam becomes competitive, impulsive and fixated on immediate rewards, while Mel feels more thoughtful and increasingly curious about the world around her. Their dynamic starts to resemble siblings growing up together, which also made the title Littermates click for me.

The music surprised me too. “If You Leave Me Now” by Chicago has been stuck in my head ever since, and every song feels like it actually belongs in the scene rather than being dropped in just because it’s recognizable. The choices add to the characters and the strange tone of the movie, which isn’t always the case when familiar songs show up in movies. Sometimes the song takes you out of the movie and you are solely engaged with the music because it is out of place. That was not the case here.

I was also surprised to learn afterward that the movie was shot in 4:3. Normally that ratio jumps out at me immediately and can even pull me out of a film, but here I didn’t consciously notice it once while watching. That probably says something about how naturally the visual style fits the confined world of the cottage.

There’s an absurdity running underneath all of it that keeps the movie from becoming as bleak as the circumstances probably should feel. Even as things become more serious, there’s still something slightly offbeat about watching these adults argue, compete and behave like children while the world outside remains largely unexplained. There are also a scene involving a wheelchair that made me both nervous and on the verge of laughter which I think pretty much lands exactly where the filmmakers wanted me to be.

The mystery is what carried the movie for me. Littermates doesn’t rush to explain itself, and while that restraint could easily have tested my patience, the performances, tone and constant uncertainty were enough to keep me invested.