Stephen King has written a wide variety of horror stories over the decades, and family lies at the heart of many. From the relationship between Carrie and her mom to the characters torn apart by grief in Pet Sematary or the Losers’ Club in It, King remains fascinated by the way family units deal with terrifying threats, whether external or internal. King himself is a family man whose sons–Joe Hill and Owen King–are writers themselves. In the Tall Grass was his second collaboration with Joe; published in two parts in Esquire magazine in 2012, it once again deals with dads, moms, and siblings in a fight for survival against supernatural forces. It’s also the latest King story to be adapted to the screen, and the movie version hits Netflix this week.
In the Tall Grass has a simple premise. A young, pregnant woman named Becky (Laysla De Oliveira) and her brother Cal (Avery Whitted) are passing through rural Kansas on their way to San Diego. While taking a break by the side of a huge field, they hear a boy crying for help, claiming to be lost in the tall grass. Becky and Cal enter the field and find themselves separated and also lost, unable to find a way out. Soon they realise that there are others in the grass with them, and that strange things are happening.
This is a great set-up for a spooky yarn, and it’s easy to see why writer/director Vincenzo Natali was drawn to it. Natali made his directing debut with a classic of claustrophobic scares–the 1997 sci-fi favorite Cube–and the first 20 minutes of In the Tall Grass are suspenseful, scary, and stylishly shot. Once we move into the field, the camera stays close on the characters, letting the grass surround them and creating a sense of increasing unease. Natali crosscuts between Becky, Cal, and Tobin (Will Buie Jr.), the young boy, and uses sound to increase the disorientation as their voices move, seemingly impossibly, around the field. We feel real fear for their situation, which is increased by the fact that Becky is visibly pregnant. Daylight horror is a difficult thing to pull off, and for a while, Natali does so masterfully.
But what makes the first section so effective–the claustrophobic supernatural mystery of being trapped in a field that seems to have its own rules of time and space–ultimately becomes an issue as more characters and subplots are introduced. We meet Tobin’s parents Ross (Patrick Wilson) and Natalie (Rachel Wilson, no relation), who have been trapped in the grass for some time. Ross, in particular, seems remarkably unconcerned by the situation, and as the film continues, it becomes clear that the threat isn’t just the fact they cannot leave the field. Patrick Wilson uses his natural charm to win the audience’s sympathy, then shows a darker side that we don’t see very often from the actor.
Unfortunately, nothing else that the movie offers is very interesting, and it quickly stops being scary. Some intriguing initial ideas, such as the time loops that seem to exist within the grass, are largely abandoned for repetitive and formulaic scenes of the characters being chased round the field by one of the group who has gone bad. Becky is the only character given any particular depth or backstory, but the only thing the arrival of her ex-boyfriend at the midway point accomplishes is providing yet another unsympathetic potential victim. Explanations of the field’s supernatural power, which seems to derive from a huge rock, are frustratingly vague, and hints at some wider Lovecraftian mythology are underdeveloped. Mystery and ambiguity can be a powerful weapon for horror filmmakers, but here these elements just comes across as poorly explained rather than deliberately abstract.
There are a lot of Stephen King movies and shows around at the moment, and the huge success of It: Chapter 2 has ensured that this situation won’t be changing any time soon. In the Tall Grass is hardly the worst of recent adaptations, especially when compared to the woeful Dark Tower movie or the mercifully short-lived TV version of The Mist. But it’s yet further proof that not everything the great man writes–or co-writes–necessarily works on the screen. In the Tall Grass might provide a few chills for undemanding fans gorging on horror movies throughout October, but will be quickly forgotten as the next dozen King adaptations roll around.
Reviewed at Fantastic Fest 2019.
