IN THE TALL GRASS (2019)

Studio:      Netflix
Director:    Vincenzo Natali
Writer:      Vincenzo Natali
Producer:  Steven Hoban, Mark Smith, Jimmy Miller, M. Riley
Stars:     Harrison Gilbertson, Laysla De Oliveira, Avery Whitted, Will Buie Jr., Rachel Wilson, Patrick Wilson

Review Score:

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Summary:

Two families come together to confront their demons when they become hopelessly lost in a supernatural field of tall grass.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

On a cross-country drive to San Diego, Cal DeMuth and his pregnant sister Becky stop at the deserted Church of the Black Rock of the Redeemer on a remote Kansas road. Hearing Tobin Humboldt calling for help from a tall field of grass, the siblings go looking for the young boy. Cal and Becky are separated as they become supernaturally lost inside the field.

Tobin’s father Ross finds Becky. During their odd encounter, Ross reveals that his wife Natalie is lost in the field too.

Cal finds Tobin after night falls. Tobin claims it is easier to find dead things in the field, like his dog Freddy, because the field only moves living things. Tobin says he became lost when his family entered the grass to find a man calling for help.

Tobin escorts Cal to a giant black rock in a clearing. Tobin explains that the rock taught him to hear the grass, which is how he knows Becky will die soon. Cal hears Becky scream.

Two months later, Becky’s estranged boyfriend Travis McKean comes looking for the missing siblings. Travis becomes lost in the grass field. Travis meets Tobin. Tobin shocks Travis by claiming they already know each other. Tobin takes Travis to Becky’s corpse, which causes Travis to have a breakdown.

Travis recovers in daylight. Travis shouts for help. Having stopped outside the church, Ross, Nicole, and Tobin enter the field to answer Travis’ pleas, trapping themselves in a supernatural time loop. Ross finds the black rock.

An unspecified amount of time later, Cal and Becky enter the field for what they think is the first time. This time however, they hear Travis calling for help instead of Tobin.

Travis, Tobin, Becky, and Cal come together over Tobin’s dead dog Freddy. Travis explains that he came looking for Becky and Cal after they went missing, which confuses Becky and Cal. While the foursome tries finding a path back to the church, Becky receives a cryptic phone call.

Becky collapses. Ross revives her. Claiming he can show them a way out, Ross escorts everyone to the black rock. Ross enters a momentary trance when he touches the rock. Ross insists that everyone else touch the rock too.

Natalie shouts at everyone to stop. Natalie claims her husband is lying. She also says she saw Becky dead. Becky envisions Ross becoming one of the unseen grass people that can occasionally be heard whispering in the field.

Claiming to be in communication with the rock, Ross tells everyone the stone brought them together to work through the complications in their lives. Ross adds that touching the rock will reveal everything they want to know, including how to leave. However, once they see the truth, Ross claims they won’t want to go.

Ross kills Natalie in front of everyone. Travis, Becky, Tobin, and Cal flee to an abandoned bowling alley. Tobin concludes they are in a cycle of dying and resurrecting, which is what his father meant when he said they are all grass.

Cal accuses Travis of abandoning Becky when she refused to have an abortion. Travis accuses Cal of being in love with his sister. The two men fight.

Everyone flees to the roof when Ross arrives. Travis slips and Cal lets him fall to the ground. Everyone flees back below after Ross ascends to the roof. Becky confronts Cal with her suspicion that he did something to Travis.

Ross captures and kills Cal. Ross discards Cal’s body next to a line of previous Cal corpses. Ross laughs over how Cal continually makes the same wrong move when he flees from Ross.

Travis recovers from his fall. Over a short distance in the field, Travis and Becky reconcile. Becky reveals she was going to San Diego to give up her unborn baby for adoption. Travis encourages Becky to keep their child.

Ross captures Becky. Becky gets away by stabbing Ross in his eye. However, grass people recapture Becky and carry her to the black rock.

Becky calls her own phone with a warning to not let Cal hurt Travis or else they will continue making the same mistakes and repeating their deaths. As Becky goes into labor, the ground opens up to a massive sinkhole lined with writhing bodies. Becky falls unconscious.

When she recovers, Becky experiences a vision of Cal delivering her baby. It turns out Cal is actually Ross feeding Becky flesh from her dead child.

Travis finds Becky collapsed. Tobin tells Travis that Ross killed Becky’s baby as well as Cal. Ross attacks Travis before capturing Tobin. Ross tries to force Tobin to touch the rock, but Becky recovers and rescues the boy. Travis strangles Ross to death, but Becky drops dead.

Although Tobin tries to stop him, Travis touches the rock. After his vision, Travis realizes he can no longer leave the field. However, Travis gives Becky’s necklace to Tobin, tells the boy “don’t let them in,” and supernaturally transports Tobin back to the church.

Tobin exits the church to find Cal and Becky responding to his cries for help from the field. Tobin pleads with the siblings to ignore his other voice. Tobin convinces Becky to trust him by returning Becky’s necklace. Becky’s intuition compels her to stop Cal from entering the grass. Experiencing a complete change of heart from the experience, Becky decides to keep her baby and return home. Meanwhile, Travis collapses in the field.

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Review:

A 2,000-mile road trip will give you perspective on America like nothing else can. When you live in a dense urban metropolis, it’s easy to overlook that the country is inconceivably enormous. Wide expanses of unpopulated land stretch for hundreds of miles without a single soul or structure in sight.

Reflecting on that can be both inspiring and terrifying. Ever been down a remote road that starts with a sign warning, “last gas for 150 miles?” Your sole companion on an overnight drive lit only by headlights is an alert imagination mulling the many ways you could go missing in the middle of nowhere. These areas may as well exist in alternate dimensions because without cellphone reception or surveillance systems, there’s no hope of someone finding out where you went or what happened when you’re outside the eyes of civilization.

On top of the helpless feeling, it’s easier to believe something supernatural could occur out in that unknown black hole of farmland and desert. Far more than in the city anyway, where rescue and logic always appear reasonably within reach.

Stephen King understands how countryside can be uniquely chilling with its endless capacity for cloaking macabre mysteries. This speaks to why he and Joe Hill revisit familiar territory with their collaborative “In the Tall Grass” novella. With its Podunk pagan cult and unseen figures tittering behind ominous green stalks, “In the Tall Grass” may read like a “Children of the Corn” stepsibling in more ways than one.

For director Vincenzo Natali, this intangibly menacing setting offers an ingenious means of controlling production costs, because most of the movie plays with only long lengths of grass as a backdrop. However, He Who Walks Behind the Row’s Advocate may counter that 100 minutes can be a tiresome time for restless viewers to spend circling the same monochromatic location.

100 minutes is nothing compared to how long the men and women of the movie spend in the grass. On their way to San Diego, Cal and his pregnant sister Becky stop by the side of a Kansas road. From a vast field, they hear the pleading cries of Tobin, a boy lost in long blades rising above their heads. Cal and Becky venture into the grass to rescue Tobin, but become separated and inexplicably lost in a seemingly supernatural maze.

Two months later, Becky’s estranged boyfriend Travis comes looking for the siblings. He finds them, but becomes unable to leave the field too. Here’s where it gets weirder. Cal and Becky claim they’ve only been lost a few moments. Tobin claims he knows Travis, even though Travis never met the boy before in his life. Clouds only start parting when Travis meets Tobin’s father, who has a curious connection to a massive black rock in the field, and when Tobin takes Travis to Becky’s corpse. Travis and the others learn the grass doesn’t just defy the laws of physics. It defies their concepts of time and reality as well.

How many thrills can be wrung from a premise where six people are trapped in an inescapable maze of grass? Some, not terribly many, would be the boringly basic answer to that question.

Suspense certainly stems from the claustrophobic conundrum as well as several spectral scenes of prophetic deaths. “In the Tall Grass” clips the hurdles in between these visions of entranced eeriness. Core characters occupy a love triangle where a woman must come to terms with the father who abandoned her unborn child while a brother whose extreme investment in her well-being doesn’t appear entirely platonic. This checks the conflict box, but their situation isn’t exciting enough to drive drama as engaging as intermittent ghoulishness.

Even though their names won’t be added to any map, the cast works well enough together, particularly Patrick Wilson putting another notch on his post as horror’s go-to guy for spontaneously swooning crooning. Yet simple characters who don’t demand emotional investment lessen the acting’s intended impact. Endearment out of arm’s reach detaches us from feeling the full force of the maze’s madness too. We’re not nearly as wrapped up in wonderment over the field’s ins and outs as we should be, never mind caring where the relationships will land. That’s on the middling melodrama as much as the cryptic crumbs of blah backstory that only feed the script slim sustenance.

“In the Tall Grass” isn’t in the top third of Stephen King stories, so it tracks that the film wouldn’t land in the highest tiers of King adaptations either. For that matter, it’s also not in the top third of Vincenzo Natali features.

It’s still decidedly above average considering what lackluster titles lurk on the lower rungs of the King adaptation ladder. And the movie taps a tease of the “Bermuda Triangle in America’s heartland” horror described in this review’s intro. Lightly trippy though it may be, the casual amble through “Groundhog Day” grass merely means neither your mind nor your pulse will race as fast as you might want for a spookily stylized thriller.

Review Score: 60

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