Brett's Notes on The Little Things

The Little Things (2021)

Background

Lots of mega-Hollywood power players involved in the production. Not really anyone ultra-sus, though, except Mike Drake and maybe Nicholas Sparks.

Executive producer Mike Drake executive produced the Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) remake as well as The Number 23 (2007). Drake also received an associate producer credit for the Monarch film The Caveman’s Valentine 2001).

Co-producer Nicholas Sparks has some sus credits, especially as a second unit director.

Opening

“47 bulbs in the letter ‘G,’” which is missing from “Black Angus,” so that it spells “Black Anus.” Given the in-film emphasis on “the little things,” this must certainly be alluding to something of numerological significance. The “G” is probably the Masonic G.

What’s Really Going on?

“It’s the little things that get you caught.” Get who caught? Filmmakers? Clue that the deepest, darkest stuff is in small details, not the big picture of the plot.

The whole framing of the plot and how quickly it is forgotten is cuing the perceptive viewer to something. Deke is sent to LA to collect evidence—bloody boots—from a crime scene so that a defendant in Kern County would not be acquitted of murder. Time is of the essence, we’re told, and in language that feels very much like it is signaling some other purposes and circumstances altogether, the Sheriff absolutely insists that veteran Deke do this job, which he is for some reason reluctant to do. Obviously, given the length of time Deke is in LA (later it’s said that he’s using vacation time), the defendant in question must have walked…which amounts, or would amount (if this is the real purpose), to another murderer gone free on Deke’s watch. Is this a metaphor for the kind of misdirectionthat is so rife in the serial killer genre?

Ironically, the Kern County suspect will go free  because Deke is distracted by a suddenly desperate pursuit of still another elusive serial killer, allegedly driven by his regret over having unavenged deaths but actually closely connected to his sense of guilt over accidentally killing a woman. “What is the difference between me and a serial killer?” is the implied psychological question tormenting him, driving him to find lowlifes and blame them for crimes they didn’t commit.

But why is there no supervision from Kern County? He’s never reprimanded by or checks in with his supervisor, the Sheriff. In the last scene, he puts on his Kern County Sheriff’s deputy uniform, suggesting that he’s “going back to work as if nothing happened.”

“We haven’t been under this much pressure since the Nightstalker”—alluding, esoterically, to the “pressure” to produce a patsy for a series of crimes actually committed by more than one suspect but all related to the Network (McGowan’s Programmed to Kill). Is Deke really being sent to find a patsy? The first one (the pedo who breaks into tears) doesn’t pan out, so he finds a more probable candidate, someone who confesses to crimes he didn’t commit. The coroner, Deke’s friend who helped cover up his accidental killing years ago, immediately perceives that Deke’s cover story about following up on a “case up north” is phony.

The declared importance of little details in the film justifies reading something into the fact that Deke (as seen in perhaps just one shot) wears a Marine Corps. watch. The movie is set in 1990, so Deke would be a Vietnam veteran. Phoenix Program?

Occult elements:

Around the first crime scene—the woman in the apartment—there are Crowleyesque hexagram stars, masquerade masks (including a morbid sculpture of some sort with masks), rock and roll posters (including a No Doubt show bill on the refrigerator); a Lost Boys poster; [what is the pink female figure seen on a sticker?]. This girl is from “Kansas.” Girl from “Kansas” killed in LA (“the Emerald City”)—Wizard of Oz trope in background, with masks pointing both to the theater (Hollywood) and to the mind control cult. Her head was covered, like the other alleged victims of the killer—coverings of the mouth or eyes or the entire head being a recurrent Monarch trope.

Deke seems to know her apartment was under surveillance, in the scene where he spies it out from an apartment on the opposite side, with a full view. In this scene, we’re more or less subtly given to understand that Deke “puts himself in the mind of the serial killer,” as part of his job as a detective or for whatever other purpose. This identification might be at play when Deke says to Jim that “You own them,” referring to the victims of crimes you investigate but also possibly invoking the serial killer’s belief that he “owns” his victims in the afterlife. A few lines later, he mouths the catchphrase line, “It’s the little things that get you caught,” as if speaking from the perspective of a criminal/killer.

Occult overtones are present as well in the three-victim crime scene where Denzel accidentally shot the victim. The women, as he explains to Jim and as we see in flashback, were bound and placed at a table, “like a tea party,” but actually like they were being sacrificed at a stone altar.

Leto Character

Leto as master manipulator using magic to control the perception of the detectives??? Or just a tale about selection bias and suspicion gone wild?

He is running a scam, is a crime buff, clearly gets off on toying with the police, and has previous given a false confession to another spectacular murder (a “walk-in confession,” they call it, the type of confession that is never reliable). Cf. how the elites “confess” their crimes in front of us but are not taken seriously.

Like the real-life Leto, the character inserts himself into/takes ownership for crimes he didn’t commit but which he thinks are cool (Laurel Canyon psyop, assassination of Lennon).

He has a copy of Helter Skelter in his apartment, connecting with the Rosemary’s Baby Curse he evokes in Chapter 27…giving added significance to the occult/Satanic allusions at the crime scenes.

“Ernesto Miranda was actually guilty,” Leto quips, letting us in that he knows that things are not what they seem.

He literally takes Jim “for a ride.”

The ride at the end is almost reminiscent of the end of Seven. It might have been filmed in the same general area, except here it’s at night. There’s also a similar scenario apparently: a veteran black cop trying to stop an impulsive young white cop from ruining his life by giving in to the games of the master manipulator who wants to be “caught.”

Religion

Christian language (“disciple,” “faith,” “holy roller”) is used throughout the film, and the Deke character is a lapsed Christian who apparently still clings to his Christian foundations (e.g., the scene where he’s scoping a teenage girl in a car but averts his eyes up to a cross on a hill).

Denzel reportedly is a serious Christian, and his faith informs his decision about roles. But his “Christian” movies also include obvious superclass messaging (Book of Eli, for example, pushes apocalypse programming).

“How's a guy with the best clearance rate work 15 years without a promotion?” “Maybe I didn't go to the right church.” What does this imply? That he didn’t advance because of his Christianity? Is there an allusion to a Satanic cult running the police department (as in No Place to Hide)? Yet in the next sentence, Denzel implies that he’s pulled away from God because of the horrible things he’s witnessed in his line of work.

Purpose and Messaging

The Little Things reveals how the serial killer-detective genre (movies like Zodiac) is an elaborate exercise in misdirection, partly using verisimilitude.

Revelation of the Method

Deke psyops Jim at the end “for his own good,” sending him the red barrette that he purchased from a store and palming it off as the victim’s red barrette found in Leto’s possession. This leaves us to suspect that we are being psyoped “for our own good.” It also makes us wonder if Deke is part of a bigger operation and not in “the wrong church” (see below) after all.

The psyop’ed detective is the viewer. But who is the filmmaker/master manipulator? Leto perhaps…but if Deke is trawling for patsies, he’s also part of the “production,” while the real filmmaker is unseen: it’s a collaborative effort.

The whole movie is designed to jerk the viewer around, on the model of how the Leto character (and possibly Deke and whoever is behind him???) jerks around Jim and Deke (?). (Even if Deke’s job is to find a patsy, it’s still possible that Leto is effectively manipulating him as well.)

The movie does have the decency to let the viewer know at the end that it’s been jerking them around (when it reveals that Deke bought the red barrette)…although perhaps it still doesn’t let on about the extent of the deception (that is, if Deke is more “deeply involved” than the diegesis allows us to confirm).

Given the (increasing) prevalence of conspiracy themes in Hollywood movies, one certainly can’t rule out the possibility that the filmmakers are trolling conspiracy theorists (through their identification with the Leto character and their identification of the audience with Jim) and telling them to give up trying to find the “real” culprit.

Maybe we should reject the message that it’s “the little things” as a piece of meta-misdirectionand conclude instead that it’s the big things hiding in plain sight that are the real giveaway (not numerological BS and hidden clues).

The killer doesn’t rape his victims, only tortures them for sexual pleasure. So sex fully “sublimated” into violence. This seems to highlight an important feature of the Hollywood serial killer/super-predator, who represents a kind of spiritual ideal for the superclass.

Loose ends and harebrained theories

Is Deke the killer?

There’s a shot that dissolve from a headlight into Denzel’s eye (one-eye motif).

Detective’s kids’ room: dragonfly over bed and ornamental roses all over wall.