Title: Little Jar
MPAA Rating: Not Yet Rated
Director: Dominic López
Starring: Kelsey Gunn, Nicholas Anthony Reid, Jon Snow
Runtime: 1 hr 30 mins

What It Is: A true introvert who hates being amongst people, office worker Ainsley (Gunn) seizes the opportunity to embrace her isolated life following the issuing of quarantine during the pandemic. She expects to love the time away from work and people, and the quarantine to last no longer than a few days or weeks, but to her surprise being alone for the extended period wasn’t all it was cracked out to be. In her increased desperation for connection and attention, Ainsley creates a new friend out of a dead mouse she finds in a jar.

What We Think: We’ve had enough time and space from the quarantine era by now, which in hindsight, is still a crazy thing to have happened and affected every country and individuals of all ages. It was a heated sociopolitical climate, we were required to suit up and mask up to go anywhere, stay 6 feet apart from others (which is a good rule to be had in general when it comes to strangers anyway), and isolate ourselves from others for numerous months. Starting out, we all thought that the pandemic and quarantine weren’t going to last as long as they did or have the impact that they had, but whether we try to stifle it or not, there’s no denying that we’ve all been personally in some way affected by this time in history. It feels like only now we’ve been able to reflect on how. Little Jar offers us just that, through comfortable, non-exploitative means where we’re allowed to find ourselves within this character’s safe space and come to realize how psychologically we can be changed when we don’t have the world outside anymore, condemned to our little bubbles. The flick presents itself in a way that I think would really, especially appeal to older and younger generations as it has an all-ages inclusivity to it. Kelsey Gunn is charming, carrying the movie on behalf of her character and, more uniquely, a personified dead mouse friend that she dresses up and has conversations with. Although the setup is beautifully presented and relatable, I would like to note that scenes with Gunn talking to the mouse, or rather herself playing pretend as a coping mechanism, do tend to draw on too long, and perhaps some more scenes of just herself or other characters could have helped the pacing.

Our Grade: B-; One of the first post-quarantine films that I’ve seen that has narratively tackled our collective nightmare in this way, Little Jar playfully and respectfully showcases what happens when even those most suited to a life of isolation and cleanliness begin to go through the motions due to the strange and extreme circumstances.  It takes part in this weird history, combatting it with equally friendly weirdness in its expression of what it was like for us all during this time, and for that, I think it can be a genuinely helpful film for those of us still healing and reflecting on this time.