Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
In New York City, a young girl is caught in the middle of her parents' bitter custody battle.
What Maisie Knew is a quietly devastating drama anchored by an extraordinary central performance from Onata Aprile, whose naturalistic portrayal of childhood bewilderment and resilience is genuinely exceptional. The adult cast — Julianne Moore, Steve Coogan, Alexander Skarsgård, and Joanna Vanderham — is uniformly strong. The film's distinctive choice to frame the entire custody battle from the child's limited perspective gives it a fresh, empathetic lens, though the divorce drama territory itself is well-trodden. Cinematography is competent and appropriately intimate but unremarkable. The ending offers a bittersweet emotional resolution that feels earned without being falsely uplifting, though it doesn't fully transcend convention.