Movie Review: 'Little Fish' Combines Dystopia and Romance

Imagine a couple, a very happy couple. Imagine two people who simply belong together, the world just seems right when they are together. Now imagine if those two people completely forgot each other. Suddenly, the beauty and excitement of seeing two incredible people madly in love turns into something dark and gray. The joy that love brings is replaced by a harsh sadness and an almost oppressive emptiness.

The new drama film, Little Fish, starring Olivia Cooke and Jack O’Connell, and directed by Chad Hartigan, is not quite that despairing. This lovely sad movie about a couple trapped in a world ravaged by memory loss in the form of a virus, employs a sci-fi trope, a form of dystopia, and makes it secondary to a romance plot filled with complicated emotions and lovely moments of two people deeply in love with each other.

In Little Fish, Olivia Cooke is Emma and Jack O’Connell is Jude. They met one day on the beach when Jude’s dog ran up to Emma who was sitting on the beach crying. Emma immediately forgets why she was so sad as she is immediately drawn to Jude. The two begin a courtship that is very sweet and builds toward a relationship and eventually to a loving marriage and a life together.

That joy is threatened however, when a virus begins to savage the globe. This virus doesn’t kill you, instead, it kills your memory. As the virus spreads, some people appear immune, others lose their memories immediately and terrifyingly and others slowly begin to fade away. The virus is entirely unpredictable and has terrible effects on those afflicted. Those such as Emma and Jude’s friend Ben (Raul Castillo) whose loss of memory is gradual and then sudden, one day, he's singing with his wife, the next day, his memory is gone.

Ben also has a wife, Samantha (Soko) and when he completely forgets her, the moment is truly terrifying. That’s just the set up of Little Fish however, as you can likely imagine, one half of our central couple is also destined to get the virus while the other half is desperately trying to save their memory and their life together by any means necessary. It’s a heart-rending journey but one filled with a great deal of beauty amid the sadness.

Little Fish was directed by Chad Hartigan who made a solid name for himself in 2016 with the charming comedy, Morris from America. The film was written by uncredited The Batman screenwriter, Mattson Tomlin who broke into screenwriting with the 2020 action movie, Project Power. The duo appear to work well together mixing heart and humor and sadness bordering on despair together in a fashion that’s remarkably watchable.

Yes, there is a heaviness that permeates much of the film but the stars, Olivia Cooke and Jack O'Connell, are magnetic and dynamic and you can’t help but root for them and want to see where this story is headed. I’m not going to tell you anything about the ending of Little Fish. All I will tell you is that the ending has a strong impact to it, you feel it. The ending of Little Fish may divide some audiences, especially those looking for something more familiar or simple.

Olivia Cooke and Jack O’Connell have tremendous chemistry on screen. I adored these two people together and as they become embroiled in this virus and one of them begins to slip away, even the anguish is compelling. The movie is not without hope but that hope is accompanied by a sense of authenticity to how something like this might really exist, something messy and complicated and not the least bit predictable.

The magnetism of the central couple makes Little Fish incredibly watchable as does the smart and efficient direction that never toys with you, always levels with the audience while balancing the need for hope with fidelity to the dystopian vision of a future where millions of people have forgotten their wives, husbands, jobs, children and identities. The story is a conversation about what it is to love someone or the memory of someone or our notion of who that person is.

Little Fish arrives in theaters and on some on demand services on Friday, February 5th.