by Kara Machowski
Leave it to the King to take something so natural as tall grass and a rock and turn it into something that will hauntingly seep into your nightmares. In the Tall Grass is a novella written by Stephen King and his son, Joe Hill in 2012. The film adaptation is written and directed by Vincenzo Natali available on Netflix - which is the third of King's tales that was scooped up by the streaming service, including 1922 and Gerald’s Game, two other eerily suspenseful movies. In the Tall Grass is fashioned to appear timeless by outfits that could have been stylish in the 1970’s, a few cars from that era, and even though there are cell phones used throughout, you are still unsure when certain characters could be from.
This unearthly alluring feature reels you in with a young Becky, (Laysla De Oliveira) who is about six-months pregnant and her brother, Calvin (Avery Whitted) who are driving cross-country to California for what you assume, a better life. Becky becomes ill while in the car and they stop for a moment, after a deliciously gruesome vomiting scene they hear a child calling for help in the grass beside them. The young boy introduces himself from a distance as Tobin Humboldt (Will Buie Jr.) and says he’s stuck and can’t find his way to the road. Calvin, playing the heroic big brother, ventures first into the field and Becky, feeling hot and uneasy follows a few moments behind, but just far enough behind that she can't catch up to Calvin.
Neither Becky or Calvin can find Tobin nor each other and they begin to realize the more they try, they strangely sound further and further away. The focus of the story seems to be to blind you as to what’s to come by braiding you in the tension of the isolation that each character experiences as they seem to be venturing into a hauntingly green hole. When Calvin is wrapped in despair by the horror that he may never find his sister, Tobin makes an appearance and tells him that “it’s easier to find things when they’re dead”. Freaking creepy.
In the Tall Grass beguiles you from the first scene with the fear for Becky and her baby entering the ghostly grass and hope that the young boy can be saved from it. You soon find out that Tobin’s parents, Ross (Patrick Wilson) and Natalie (Tiffany) are lost in the grass as well looking for their son. As the sun sets you realize that anything imaginable can be lurking through the grass in the night, in the dark. The characters are stuck in a ghastly, psychedelic Inception like vortex all the while you’re wondering if you can trust the validity of each character throughout. Ginger Martini, the film’s costume designer perfectly described the film as “a hauntingly beautiful grass ballet”. All that I know, is that after watching this movie, I would for a fact hesitate to venture into a field of grass higher than I can see.
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