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Who Is The Real Killer In The Little Things?

Warner Bros. implemented a unique release strategy for all of its big theatrical films for 2021, electing to put them all on HBO Max at no extra charge to subscribers while simultaneously releasing them in theaters. One of the first films released as part of this experiment was "The Little Things," a murder-mystery thriller film with an A-list cast including Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, and Jared Leto. "The Little Things" saw mixed reviews when it was released, garnering a 45% on Rotten Tomatoes, though fans responded more positively with a 67% audience score.

"The Little Things" focused on Washington's Joe "Deke" Deacon and Malek's Jim Baxter searching for a serial killer. They eventually come across Leto's Albert Sparma, and the film makes it all but clear that the two police officers are absolutely convinced of his guilt. However, in spite of "The Little Things"' ending, which has Baxter killing Sparma in a fit of rage and Deacon helping him cover it up, viewers are never really given a concrete answer as to who the killer is. There are a couple of major possibilities, though there is some bad news involved here.

The killer may be Deacon or Baxter, but it isn't clear who exactly it is

During an interview with Entertainment Weekly discussing the ending of "The Little Things," director John Lee Hancock revealed that even he did not know who the killer was. When discussing Albert Sparma's guilt, he said he deliberately placed misdirection to throw viewers off. "Honestly, when I wrote it, I just tried to build in as many things pointing to his guilt as points to his innocence," Hancock said. "I think there is an equal number of each in the script. I can make an argument either way."

Interestingly enough, the only people we know for sure that are killers in "The Little Things" are Jim Baxter and Joe Deacon, the latter of whom is revealed to have accidentally killed the only survivor of a previous murder case. However, determining for certain who the serial killer is in "The Little Things" is an impossible task with the current information available. Hancock himself says that knowing who the killer is isn't the point of the film, but that doesn't mean that fans won't continue to debate about it for years to come.