After their impressive collaboration on Ghostlight, directors Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson return to the dramatic family drama with Ghostlight breakout Mallen Kupferer as their star. Her real-life mother, Tara Mallen, reprises her onscreen role as Minnie’s mom, a source of embarrassment for her daughter who cringes at every inappropriate comment or rolls her eyes at every question, as any teenager would. Minnie openly resents how nonchalant her mother has raised her, preferring the way Helen doted on Callie, but her frustration with her home life is just one of the things she must come to terms with over the course of the movie.
O’Sullivan, who wrote both Ghostlight and Mouse, digs beyond the layers of simple growing pangs to unearth Minnie’s insecurities around her working-class background and her fears that she will never really find her true self after standing in Callie’s shadow for so long. Similarly, Helen is on her own journey—one that Minnie can’t see because she’s too young—and she has her own set of anxieties around what comes next after losing a child. But it’s not all teen angst and waterworks. O’Sullivan makes space for Minnie to start discovering who she is, and who she’s interested in, and the bumpy excitement over a first crush that leads to a first kiss. Even though it’s made complicated by her classmate’s homophobic teasing and her mom listening in on phone conversations, it’s at least a little reprieve from the sadness, and a lesson on learning to live with grief for the joyful moments in life.
As Minnie, Mallen Kupferer carries the heartwrenching drama to its fullest and its most uncomfortable, vulnerable places. She embodies Minnie’s struggle to understand what’s happened with the subtlety of a child who doesn’t yet know the language of grief, but is stuck with all of these feelings inside her anyway. Her nuanced expressions show pain in her silence and her rage, the way she carries herself around different people and places show how safe she feels around them, and when she finally does start to lash out, it’s never like a bratty child but like a hurt one who doesn’t quite understand where her rage is coming from. As both a scene partner and in her own quiet moments, Okonedo’s performance is equally extraordinary. Her character so badly wants to stay in Minnie’s life, so as not to lose that connection to her daughter, but she’s still just a teen, who can’t yet understand that Helen’s grief is different from her own. As Helen tries to share her motherly love by helping Minnie out, Okonedo’s performance is just as torn and emotional as Mallen Kupferer’s, because these two desperately need someone to talk to—and that someone is no longer in either of their lives.
Throughout this, O’Sullivan and Thompson don’t necessarily indulge in melodramatic waterworks. Instead, they strike a balance between solemnity and heartbreak, letting the actors work through their characters’ conflicted feelings in measured steps. Grief doesn’t always look the same for everyone. Cinematographers Nate Hurtsellers and Luke Dyra shoot Mouse to look like photos of the era, during the waning days of the disposable film camera, giving the movie an extra nostalgia alongside its old ringtones and songs like Nelly’s “Hot In Herre.” Lack of phone cameras aside, there’s almost a timeless quality to Mouse as the kids drive on pretty tree-lined streets and hang out by the local watering hole after school. It’s an idyllic suburbia that failed both Minnie—in how her classmates ostracize her without Callie around—and Helen—in how isolated she becomes after Callie’s death. Despite its central pair sharing a lost loved one, Mouse is a lesson on giving each other the space to grieve in their own way.
Director: Kelly O’Sullivan, Alex Thompson
Writer: Kelly O’Sullivan
Starring: Katherine Mallen Kupferer, Sophie Okonedo, Chloe Coleman, Tara Mallen, David Hyde Pierce
Release date: November 6, 2026
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