In The Tall Grass; USA 2019; Dir by Vincenzo Natali; Starring Laysla De Oliveira, Avery Whitted, Patrick Wilson
For Movie Number 8, Day 7 (on October 9 - this is all easy to keep straight, right) we decided to check out a new film on Netflix based on a Stephen King novella, In The Tall Grass. We come across Cal and a very pregnant Becky driving through a very flat Kansas. Becky glances at Cal who, while driving, is eating a greasy looking fast food burger. Pretty soon they are pulling over so Becky can let go of her queasiness on the side of the road (not sure why, but up chucking has become a prevailing theme in our movie and television watching this month).
They've pulled over between a creepy old church and a field of tall corn - no wait, even though we are in Kansas, it's not corn it's grass as tall as corn. As the sit, waiting to continue their journey we are a boy's voice call out to them - he's lost, he's scared and he needs help. After an exasperated sigh, Cal removes his glasses and just dashes off into the tall corn, er, grass, and just like that we are off. Becky is more hesitant than Cal but OF COURSE she shortly heads into the corn, I mean grass. It is the title of the film, so clearly this is where we are supposed to go.
What ensues is a little over 100 minutes of running around what is clearly some sort of enchanted field. We meet another family (including father and modern horror staple Patrick Wilson) separated in the grass, a very mysterious and creepy rock, multiple time lines bending too and fro over each other and along the way learn about some family dynamics and turmoil that must be worked through (another modern horror staple, most notably in the films of Mike Flanagan who also covered Stephen King territory in 2017's Gerald's Game - another Netflix original).
What we don't get - or I didn't get - was a point of it all. It's creepy, it's weird, but it's never really scary and there's no real explanation for what is going on. While I generally do not find this to be a fault in movies, especially horror movies (I think in general Hollywood movies of late have suffered from over exposition and explanation), but in this case the movie doesn't really get weird enough to make it worth not having an explanation of what is going on... so what we can get from it is that the field caused a lot of suffering for a lot of folks so that someone can come to the realization of the path in life they should be following. I won't spoil it here, but it becomes fairly obvious fairly quickly.
Overall, this is easily the dud of the Halloween season for us so far.
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