Kritiken

What saves Little Woods from becoming just another social realist downer are the performances (Thompson’s is especially nuanced) and DaCosta’s sharp attention to emotional detail.

Little Woods manages to move forward without ever letting us know if there’s really a way out. It’s a testament to the strength of Thompson’s performance, and DaCosta’s control of tone and action, that for all the bleakness of this world, we keep watching. The result is a work that lingers, grimly, in the mind

The actress Tessa Thompson emotionally expands “Little Woods,” turning a small movie into something more than its textured parts.

Thematically and visually, Little Woods is of a piece with Courtney Hunt's 2008 Frozen River, Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy (2008), and Debra Granik's Winter's Bone (2010) — intimate realist dramas with a touch of the Grimm fairytale, made by women about women struggling to rise above lives hemmed in by danger and deprivation.

The characters in these films are often seen only in terms of how they affirm a political thesis statement, as their individualities are eclipsed in the filmmakers’ minds by their social neediness.