Checked out the new Netflix movie In the Tall Grass, based on a Stephen King / Joe Hill (one of his kids) novella (which I have not read). This one showed up on Netflix a couple weeks ago and promises a scary situational movie that, location-wise, made me think of Children of the Corn. But no relation other than Stephen King seems uniquely scared of the heartland (and Maine).
So In the Tall Grass is about a brother and sister who stop on the side of the road in the middle of the country. There’s tall grass (and an abandoned church) all around them… and they hear a kid calling for help. They venture into the Tall Grass and quickly get lost… and then quickly realize the laws of time and space are out the window. It doesn’t matter which direction they go in the grass, they keep getting lost, time gets wonky, and they wander for seemingly days.
So, hey, simple concept movie… very low budget. I mean, you gotta pay the cast and crew plus make sure your tall grass budget is covered and you got a movie. Clever use of screen time in a pretty decent movie. There’s a mystery about what the tall grass actually is… but don’t go in expecting all the answers (if any). There’s a lot of mystical weirdness here that is never explained. I was ok with that… others might want more explanation.
What kind of bugged me about the film though is something that may have been intentional. They spend a LOT of time just wandering around through the tall grass and getting nowhere. But I think that was done to try to put us in the characters’ headspace as they progressively get more and more lost with no hope of escaping. I’ll buy that as an argument for what could otherwise be seen as treading water.
But ultimately the movie picks back up and, while not always intentionally making sense, gets pretty interesting. There’s some head-scratching time/space warping going on that may or may not hold up to scrutiny but it does make you think.
All in all, this is a pretty interesting experiment in horror movie making. It’s a not a great movie and sometimes it might wear on your patience but I think the end result is worth the watch. I’m just glad it worked out and they had the budget for all that tall grass.
Score: 74