i by Christina Newland

A beautifully simple story of moral courage in the face of complicity, Small Things Like These is one of the best films of the year.

Chicago Sun-Times by Richard Roeper

With Cillian Murphy’s quiet, almost small and yet grand performance carrying the story every step of the way, “Small Things Like These” is quite possibly the best movie I’ve seen so far this year.

RogerEbert.com by Sheila O'Malley

Keegan's writing is spare and controlled: she gets a lot done in 116 pages, and Walsh's adaptation captures the suggested interiority of the story.

IndieWire by Rachel Pronger

Part of the power of Small Things Like These lies in its Trojan horse nature. This is a political allegory disguised as a character study, a reflection on national guilt and moral complicity, wrapped inside the experiences of one man, in one small town, standing in for the whole of Ireland, and possibly the world.

The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney

It’s subtle but resonant, intimate but emotionally expansive and at every step crisply unsentimental.

Collider by Emma Kiely

It’s an electric, atmospheric, and deeply soulful look at what it means to be human, what it means to have empathy, and how faith should never come before people.

Paste Magazine by Nadira Begum

Through this adaptation, Mielants mourns the lives lost to these institutions while simultaneously providing a timely reminder of the danger of passive complicity.

The Film Stage by Rory O'Connor

With notable patience, Mielants (who directed Murphy in six episodes of Peaky Blinders) allows the darkness to gradually seep in.

The Playlist by Rafaela Sales Ross

In this deliberately stunted teasing of information, Mielants builds a muted drama that cleverly harnesses horror tropes to paint a picture of what happens within the convent’s walls.

Original-Cin by Karen Gordon

Cillian Murphy follows up his Oscar-winning role in the epic Oppenheimer with another brilliant performance in a much smaller and more intimate film, but one that also deals with questions about morality and responsibility.

TheWrap by Ben Croll

Small Things Like Things is a modest gem.

Screen Daily by Jonathan Romney

Murphy’s performance, Tim Mielants’s controlled direction and subtle emotional heft combine to make this low-key adaption of Claire Keegan’s Booker-nominated 2021 novella very much a proposition to be reckoned with.

The Telegraph by Tim Robey

Keegan chose a man of few words to make his stand, and Murphy, very much the man of the moment, steps up to play him with a heroic understatement that could move mountains.

Variety by Guy Lodge

It’s Murphy’s exquisitely pained performance, unclenching by fine degrees into something like grace, that gives Small Things Like These its eventual, fist-in-the-gut power, even as the film evades melodramatic confrontation to the last, ending elegantly at a point where many other stories might choose to begin.

Time Out by Stephen A. Russell

It’s a profound performance by Murphy – perhaps even more so in fewer words than Oppenheimer – as Bill’s anger burns with tragic urgency.

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

It is an absorbing, committed drama.

NME by Lou Thomas

Its rich tone of regret, guilt and unspoken malice comes across in careful direction from Tim Mielants, Frank van den Eeden’s shadowy cinematography and subtle, measured performances across the board.