I always try to come into every film I watch as neutral as humanly possible, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes I’m reviewing a franchise that I already like, something based on a book I’ve already read, or a sequel to a film I didn’t particularly care for, where the expectations are already pretty low. The goal is always to approach everything with a “let’s see what happens” mentality. That being said, when I found out that the team behind Ghostlight had a new film making the festival rounds this year, and there were some pretty solid reviews coming out for it, I was absolutely here for it. At this point, I feel like IFC should have reached out to me a long time ago, because there’s something about the choices that Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson make as filmmakers that really connects with me personally. Ghostlight was my favorite film of 2024, so it’s impossible not to be excited for their follow-up, Mouse. The fact that Katherine Mallen Kupferer is back, being given an opportunity to lead a film after her exceptional work in Ghostlight, which was a bit of a family affair, is another reason to be excited. Now, as we head into awards season, much like I felt with Ghostlight in 2024 and The Plague in 2025, I’m wondering if my favorite film of the year is going to be an IFC release. It’s such a weird thing to say that my number one film for the past two years has been an IFC title, but it’s true. Neither ended up with a Best Picture nomination, but IFC can’t possibly go three for three, can it?

After all, this is a studio that seems to have a conflicting ability to provide me with audio description. I know they’re part of the AMC Networks family, whose own streaming services are still struggling to figure out the concept of audio description, but asking to have an accessible screener from IFC is like asking God to bring someone back from the dead. It’s just not going to happen. Sometimes I can circumvent IFC when a title is being released through Shudder, but I’ve also twice been ignored this year on films I was offered screeners for that had audio description, where coincidentally, my request for audio description, if possible, led to what felt like a decision to just not give this guy a screener at all. Now, with Mouse, they made the clerical error of just straight up giving me the screener without requiring confirmation. However, I would have been all over that confirmation, just with the trepidation of asking for audio description that I know I’m never going to receive. So, while Mouse has an audio description track for those choosing to head out to theaters, the reason I’ve gone through this long-winded tirade is to let you know that I haven’t heard that track, because my relationship with IFC does not lend me to believe that I would ever receive it if I asked. Which is somewhat hilarious, given the fact that I just said my favorite film of 2024 was Ghostlight and my favorite film of 2025 was The Plague. I seem to love them while they seem to hate me.

Putting the spotlight on Mouse, the film follows Minnie Dunn (Katherine Mallen Kupferer), a high school junior in 2002 whose best friend, Callie Bell (Chloe Coleman), is her polar opposite in life, something Minnie seems somewhat ashamed of. Minnie grows up poor, and her mother, Barbara (Tara Mallen), works hard to provide for them, but they live in a home full of foster animals and even a foster baby brother whom Minnie also has to help take care of. Her mom isn’t exactly aiming for a Good Housekeeping award, but she is keeping her family afloat, something Minnie doesn’t quite seem to appreciate, as her best friend comes from the more affluent side of life. Specifically, Callie’s mother, Helen (Sophie Okonedo), is a classical musician who has helped her daughter pursue her dreams of one day performing on a Broadway stage. Callie lights up her high school theater, constantly getting the leads from her theater teacher, Mr. Murdaugh (David Hyde Pierce), while Minnie seems to believe she’s untalented and just kind of hangs around in the background, happy to be part of the ensemble. They’re an oddly mismatched pair, but best friends don’t have to be exactly alike. There just has to be a deeper connection. Unfortunately, Mouse deals with tragedy, much like Ghostlight did. While Ghostlight doesn’t openly reveal its tragedy at the onset, Mouse also waits a few minutes before dropping its bomb. Callie dies in a car accident, leaving both Minnie and Helen without the connective tissue in their lives. Minnie has lost her best friend, and Helen has lost her daughter. Both are depressed and inconsolable, yet somehow, slowly, they have to move forward.

Mouse highlights the performative nature of other people within Callie’s orbit, making statements about how much they miss her, how close they were, and even putting together this bizarre tribute video by her classmates set to “Angel” by Shaggy. While feeling incredibly 2002, it also made me think about the fact that this wasn’t that far removed from when I was in high school, and I don’t think I would have chosen “Angel” by Shaggy. I probably would have chosen “Angel” by Sarah McLachlan instead, because it was still a pretty fresh song. My high school even did something similar when we graduated, paying tribute to classmates we had lost along the way, set to “Good Riddance” by Green Day, which sounds like a terrible title for that kind of tribute, except the lyrics lean heavily on the idea of hoping someone had the time of their life. There’s something kind of goofy about “Angel” by Shaggy that has resonated with me and made me think quite a bit about that time period. Later on, there’s another really on-the-nose song choice, perhaps a little too on the nose, with “I Hope You Dance” being played, guess where, at a dance. But much like Ghostlight explores grief through the performing arts, Mouse does the same thing, just from various different perspectives. Minnie has always been on the outside of the performing arts. It wasn’t really her thing. It was Callie’s thing. Now that she’s heading into her senior year, there’s a big senior cabaret for the theater kids, and Minnie wants to perform something as part of it, which reconnects her with Helen, who offers to help her.

These two spend quite a bit of time getting to know each other better, feeling the loss that they both feel, and trying to become the surrogate other person in each other’s lives. Minnie needs a friend to talk to, and Helen needs a daughter. While it’s never explicitly spoken that this is what’s happening, it’s pretty obvious to the audience. But the question becomes whether there’s harm being done by shifting that grief onto another person. Is the grief Helen feels the same as the grief Minnie feels? This also puts some unrealistic expectations on Minnie’s mother, Barbara, because Minnie is spending more time around Helen, who is considerably more financially well off. There’s still this noticeable gap between the two households, even though the women remain cordial in their interactions. I think what I loved about Mouse was that it’s a reminder that we don’t always process grief correctly, and that’s okay. Sometimes it’s hard to get through the day or to get past something, and people constantly question whether or not they’re grieving the way they’re supposed to, and whether the world sees them in some altered light as a result. For example, Minnie has a conversation with Callie’s boyfriend about his grief, which he clearly has, even though he made a dumb choice at the funeral. He’s trying to explain his way through it, but because it wasn’t a normal reaction, and he seems to recognize that, there’s this self-doubt that explodes in the moment. When he asks Minnie if she thinks he’s going to hell, it doesn’t feel performative. It feels like a young boy who’s being asked to process grief for the first time and has absolutely no idea how to do it.

There’s also Iman Vellani here as Kat, an interesting choice of a character name for a film called Mouse. Kat is another character through whom Minnie is able to process her grief, because Kat has experienced grief herself, although once again, that grief is different from Minnie’s. Minnie keeps encountering people whose grief is familial, while hers is the loss of a friend. It’s hard to compare the loss of a parent or a child to the loss of your best friend, no matter how big your feelings are. Given that Mouse is also a queer-coded film, as Minnie starts exploring her own sexuality and her attraction toward Kat, it raises questions about whether Minnie was attracted to Callie as well. Were they simply best friends, or could they potentially have been something more? There’s a lot happening beneath the surface here, and O’Sullivan’s screenplay doesn’t feel the need to explicitly explain every emotion Minnie experiences. She’s a teenager trying to figure out who she is at the same time she’s trying to figure out how to exist in a world without the person who helped define so much of her identity. There’s a tremendous amount of emotional complexity in that premise, and Kupferer is more than capable of carrying it.

I remember Katherine Mallen Kupferer also played a theater nerd in Ghostlight, and there was a karaoke sequence where she got up and sang a musical theater ballad, even though I don’t remember what the song was. Here, she has an opportunity to sing “One” from A Chorus Line, which is such a weird choice that it kind of took me out of the whole thing. I realize this is set in the early 2000s, so a whole bunch of songs that would make sense nowadays are off limits because they hadn’t been written yet. But there were still plenty of songs written prior to 2002 that would have made far more sense, either for this movie or for the setup, which includes Helen suggesting the song to Minnie because she found it on Callie’s music stand, meaning her daughter wanted to learn it. “One” is an ensemble piece from A Chorus Line. It’s not a straightforward solo. You actually have to find a solo cut of it, so I can’t imagine Callie was striving to sing what is essentially an ensemble number instead of something more character-driven. I think taking a minute to explore the musical theater catalog would have been more rewarding for the experience instead of hearing Kupferer belt out “One.” There were songs she could have emotionally connected to, and for a movie that already felt so on the nose as to play “I Hope You Dance” at a dance, it can’t really claim to be afraid of being too on the nose with its musical theater selection either. Given Minnie’s exploration of her sexuality and the questions surrounding her relationship with Callie, finding a song that would have allowed her to express some of those feelings instead of the closing number from A Chorus Line would have made far more sense. Sort of like how the right choice for Don’t Say Good Luck earlier this year was Waitress, where the entire mother-daughter relationship in that film draws so many parallels to the plot of that musical that by the time you get to the final performance of “She Used to Be Mine,” everything resonates exactly as it’s supposed to. Here, it just feels like a missed opportunity.

I also thought it was interesting to bring in Helen’s experience with a medium, because it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that drives her existence. I know plenty of people seek out mediums to see if they can commune with the spirit of someone they’ve lost, but this felt like a one-off experience. The medium was stretching at times with names that didn’t even really sound the same, but it was that medium who led Helen to believe how important Minnie was to Callie. The title Mouse comes from this supposed nickname used to refer to Minnie, which adds another layer to the relationship between these two women and the girl who connected them. I also don’t think I could have accepted the gift Helen gives Minnie in the film, believing that someone should have it. I don’t know that that’s necessarily the case, and I don’t know that I would have been able to bring myself to drive it. I would have had to take a hard pass on that, and it felt kind of weird that Minnie’s answer was yes instead of no. These are some of the choices that keep Mouse from being quite as clean as Ghostlight for me, but they don’t undermine the larger emotional experience. The film still processes grief in such an honest and open manner, taking these characters down an emotional rabbit hole and using theater as a backdrop to explore the complicated relationships that emerge when someone is suddenly gone.

There are so many wonderful performances here, but the standouts for me are, of course, Katherine Mallen Kupferer and Sophie Okonedo, who are both incredible. Kupferer is really coming into her own as an actress, and it’s wonderful to see her given the opportunity to carry a film after her supporting work in Ghostlight. But Okonedo steals the show as Helen, a mother trying to process the loss of her only child. There are several details that come up throughout the film that just kind of hit you, including the fact that Helen had tried to have children before and was finally blessed with the opportunity to be a mother, only to have that taken away from her. There’s a scene where she’s walking away from another parent, and the parent stops her and suggests that she’s young enough to consider adoption, and that adoption could be very rewarding, as if she could just replace her daughter that easily. The irony, of course, is that she inadvertently does something similar by taking such a profound interest in Minnie’s life. But it’s not the same thing, and Okonedo understands that distinction beautifully. There’s a desperation to Helen’s grief that never feels manufactured, and even when she’s making questionable decisions, you understand why she’s making them. She isn’t trying to be cruel or manipulative. She’s trying to find something to hold on to when the most important person in her life has disappeared. Okonedo is absolutely devastating in this role, and I would love to see her recognized during awards season.

I do think Mouse is one of the best films of the year. I just don’t think it’s the best film of the year, nor would I say it surpasses Ghostlight. I think it asks a lot of tough questions and is willing to show these complicated feelings twisted up within its characters without offering them an easy path forward. Because maybe there isn’t one way of grieving, or a right way to do it. Maybe sometimes we make the wrong decisions, say the wrong things, lean on the wrong people, or find comfort in places that don’t necessarily make sense to anyone else. That doesn’t make the grief any less real. Mouse is a heartbreaking follow-up to Ghostlight that once again tackles grief through a devastating premise, allowing its characters to be flawed, vulnerable, and deeply human. It also gives Katherine Mallen Kupferer and Sophie Okonedo opportunities to deliver awards-worthy performances, with Okonedo in particular turning in some of the finest work I’ve seen this year. Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson have once again demonstrated an extraordinary ability to find the humanity within tragedy, and while I have some issues with the musical selections and a few of the narrative decisions, there’s no denying the emotional power of what they’ve created. If you loved Ghostlight as much as I did, you’ll get a lot out of Mouse. And while IFC might not be going three for three with my favorite film of the year, they’re certainly making a compelling argument for why I should keep paying attention to everything they release. Even if they apparently don’t want me to hear it with audio description.

Fresh: 8.7/10