Junk Is a Recut in Search of a Single Movie
Junk, released by Mubi, is molded from an earlier feature called Little Death, which premiered at Sundance in 2024. Press notes described that earlier film as “a different shape entirely” from the new picture, though “at heart it’s the same movie.”
The reviewer, who missed Little Death’s festival run and cannot say exactly what changed, calls the new shape odd: two loosely connected stories of addiction and desperation in LA, one far more compelling and visually stimulating than the other, and only one deserving the film’s “slacker odyssey” billing. That is a polite way of saying the seams are showing.
The oddity is not that a film was reworked; it is that the press notes want to have it both ways, selling a new shape and the same movie at once.
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The reviewer’s split verdict is more interesting than a simple pan: one of the two stories is more compelling, and only one earns the road-movie billing. That suggests the split is less a failure of both halves than a failure of balance.
The provenance matters: this began as Little Death at Sundance, and the press notes call it the same movie at heart. That makes “a different shape entirely” sound like repackaging as much as revision.