IN THE TALL GRASS: Is The Mind-Bending Premise Enough?

It’s no secret that I am a big fan of minimalist thrillers that rely on a small number of characters, a tense situation, and a fixed location to tell their stories. On paper, In the Tall Grass is exactly my kind of thriller. There is an infinite field of tall grass. People hear voices screaming for help deep within the field. They run inside, and now they might be stuck forever. Essentially what we have here is 1408 and Rose Red but with weeds. In fact, the film is based on the novella of the same name, written by Stephen King and his son Joe Hill.

A Promising Start

The advantage for simple thrillers like In the Tall Grass is it wastes no time in the first act. We are quickly introduced to Becky (Laysla De Oliveira) and Cal (Avery Whitted), a pair of siblings, as they run inside the tall grass to help save a little boy named Tobin (Will Buie Jr.). Instantly, the two are separated and, in true Stephen King fashion, their distance from one another and from the road constantly shifts.

Writer and director Vincenzo Natali has shown talent in the past for creating a tense narrative out of limited space and budget. His 1997 directorial debut Cube remains a cult classic in the one-location thriller sub-genre. Through some off-kilter cinematography, hallucinatory visuals, and a couple neat editing tricks, Natali keeps the film interesting and constantly moving.

Things get more mind-bending when Tobin’s father, Ross (Patrick Wilson), and a young man named Travis (Harrison Gilbertson) enter the story. Ross is also looking for his boy Tobin, but this is the first time we wonder just how long this search has been going on. In fact, how long have these characters been in the tall grass?

Once the element of time was introduced into the story, I was reminded of Mike Flanagan’s directing style, most notably in Oculus, where he tied past and present events together into one narrative string. With a single location that’s seemingly “alive,” the panic sets in on our characters. Without a doubt, the first forty minutes of In the Tall Grass are engaging and spooky, playing into our primal fears of getting lost in a vast endlessness.

A Downward Spiral

Then the plot takes a turn (you know it when you see it), and In the Tall Grass becomes a completely different film. The more it went on, the more it lost me, and I started to see this as a short story being stretched to feature length. With the film’s underwhelming second half, Natali proves to be a far better director than a writer. As a director, he has a bizarre dream-like sensibility with his visuals. As a writer, however, he over-complicates an already effective premise and presents answers that, in my opinion, killed what was delightfully ambiguous.

Though it’s always fun to see Wilson chew the scenery (like in Aquaman and Insidious), he’s operating on a completely different wavelength from the rest of the cast. De Oliveira, Whitted, and Gilbertson are unable to provide that much emotional range in their performances, largely because the script doesn’t give the characters much to do or say, other than to serve their standard redemption arcs. Really, the one aspect that keeps the film afloat is Natali’s visual sensibility. The film looks interesting from start to finish and there’s clear talent behind the camera – credit to Craig Wrobleski, who shot a few episodes of Fargo and Legion. It’s just on paper, the plot gets lost in the weeds.

A Satisfying Ending

In the Tall Grass is at its best when it messes with space and time, for it offers a unique claustrophobia that only Stephen King and a talented director can portray. Somewhere in the passable 90-minutes, In the Tall Grass is an hour long short that’s riveting, tense, and short enough to not overstay its welcome. Once we get to the ending, the film corrects its course and wraps itself up with a nice, complete resolution.

So at the end of the day, this is fine for a Netflix horror film. It’s not good enough for me to recommend to anyone but it’s worth a look if you already like these kinds of single-location horror premises.

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