Billed as a comedy about sex, Josh Lawson’s The Little Death only manages to explore a small margin of the current sexual landscape.

| Aug 2, 2023

What will likely make "The Little Death" more resonant is how organically funny it is, smuggling in bits of truth about the ways we hide our true selves from one another amidst a sea of well-conceived and executed comic set-ups.

| Nov 13, 2018

So entertaining, so funny, so hilarious.

| Aug 28, 2018

The Little Death is really just best ignored entirely.

| Oct 16, 2017

This debut feature deftly weaves together a host of surreal scenarios into a consistently funny and surprising package, as performed by a top-notch cast that includes stage luminaries Kate Mulvany and Damon Herriman.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 27, 2017

More than parodying private peccadillos is needed to turn apparently twisted trysts into a smart sex comedy.

| Apr 27, 2017

Josh Lawson's film does its best not to judge its characters, and his jokes occasionally probe some dark and daring territory.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 20, 2016

Feeling a bit more like sketch comedy than cinema, The Little Death is not without laughs, but the tone is all over the map.

| Original Score: C+ | Mar 12, 2016

The Little Death pushes the boundaries but isn't offensive, and at times the comedy really works.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 26, 2016

What prevents such risque material becoming a turn-off is the injection of genuine love into each tale.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 30, 2015

The film is an odd mixture of comedy and melodrama, with some tragedy thrown in. I would have liked it better had the film stuck to the comic elements and dumped the rest, but there is enough effective comedy in it for me to recommend it.

| Original Score: B | Dec 26, 2015

Ambitious Aussie sex romp bites off way more than it manages to chew.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 26, 2015

It's both edgy and warm-hearted, as it depicts the secret lives of five suburban couples who live in Sydney.

| Original Score: B- | Nov 12, 2015

The Little Death is a cautionary tale to selfishness and sexual conservatism; told with a desire to be cringe-worthy. It's clever, but it knows it.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 5, 2015

Frequently funny and sometimes perhaps offensive in the darkness of its humor.

| Jul 9, 2015

The Little Death is [Lawson's] feature film debut, and it's beautifully scripted, each of its five story lines working out the comic implications of a perverse urge.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 2, 2015

it goes down as easy as Junior Soprano on Bobbi Sanfillipo, which is both a blessing and a curse for Lawson's Hollywood-slick romantic comedy.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 1, 2015

[B]racing bursts of unlikely honesty in overlapping vignettes about five couples, their sexual hopes, fetishes and downfalls, with a sequence of endings that come together in a ravishingly sustained comic climax.

| Jun 30, 2015

The mood will be too mild and shock-free for fans of Todd Solondz or early Neil LaBute; yet the film is sufficiently cool and quizzical to make you wonder where Lawson will turn next.

| Jun 29, 2015

[E]xactly the sort of cheeky morbid you might expect from the title... [T]his isn't a sexy movie in the least, for all its bold and very welcome frankness. Instead, it's funny in a way that critiques romantic dysfunction.

| Jun 26, 2015