Metacritic reviews

This is not simply one of the finest films to explore the unique challenges that beset women in rural parts of the country where men outnumber them two-to-one. It is also one of the only to illustrate the devastating social impact of the war against women and their reproductive rights that has been waged by statehouses across the nation.

Little Woods isn’t always subtle, but the occasional lack of nuance doesn’t lessen the power of its timely themes or impressive performances.

Affecting, sincere, and most importantly socially astute ... it’s one of the sharpest and most promising first films I’ve seen in some time.

Rather than pass judgment, Little Woods merely allows life to occur in its oft-depressive state of seeming futility. Thompson and James commendably imbue each character with a palpable fear that ensures their actions are beyond reproach.

First-time writer-director Nia DaCosta may have filmed her Northern Plains tale on the outskirts of Austin, Texas. But she has a firm grasp of the loneliness and hopelessness of lives left behind by a boom in a state where working class women’s career and OB-GYN options are limited.

Everyone comes out of Little Woods looking good, and DaCosta comes out with a directing career.

Under DaCosta’s sure, steady direction, Little Woods belongs with movies like “Frozen River” (2008), “Winter’s Bone” (2010), “Wind River” (2017), and last year’s “Leave No Trace” — dramas about overlooked communities that ache with empathetic detail. The movie steers clear of polemics, though, and puts its faith in its characters, specifically the exhausted, unbreakable bond of sisterhood that unites these siblings.

Less relentlessly bleak than Winter's Bone, which along with Frozen River is an obvious inspiration here, the life-on-the-margins drama makes a fine, tense vehicle for Tessa Thompson, who in the last few years has stood out in a variety of genres.

Nia DaCosta’s heartland tale, rough around some edges, is a promising feature debut.

Nia DaCosta indulges one of rural quasi-thriller’s most tiresome gambits: humorlessness as a mark of high seriousness.