Halloween Films: Part 4 (3 of 7). Henry second-guesses himself with Stephen King's In the Tall Grass (Netflix Original). Get the full show now @ FilmBuds.Bandcamp.com!
[00:00:01] Let's get to Stephen King's In the Tall Grass from 2019. It's directed by Vicenzo Natale, stars Laysa D'Oliviera, Patrick Wilson, Avery Wooded.
[00:00:20] And the synopsis is, after hearing a young boy's cry for help, a sister and brother venture into a vast field of tall grass in Oklahoma, but soon discover there may be no way out, and that something evil lurks within.
[00:00:38] This was a first time watch for me. And to clarify, it is based off the novella by Stephen King and his son, Joe Hill.
[00:00:48] All in all, I think that the best thing I can say about this movie is that it's at least different.
[00:00:57] I've never really seen a concept like this before in movies where they go into this huge tall grass field and suddenly find themselves lost.
[00:01:10] They hear voices from all over. They can't find their place of geography.
[00:01:16] And suddenly there's a lot of nightmarish, supernatural things going on.
[00:01:23] There are other people stuck in there. You don't know if you can trust them or not.
[00:01:30] What I got from it commentary-wise, and it's one of the things that Stephen King does so well, is the idea of choices and being able to go back in time to re-evaluate those decisions,
[00:01:47] to see if you would make the same mistake again, given the scenario or given that opportunity, as well as being stuck in the life cycle as we all are.
[00:02:01] Can't get out of it. We are who we are.
[00:02:04] So I really liked that this movie had a lot more going on underneath than a lot of others like it.
[00:02:13] And despite it being a novella and the movie in some points feeling too stretched out story-wise for a feature film,
[00:02:24] I was still always curious as to what would happen next, and I didn't mind being stuck in this weird scenario.
[00:02:35] Some broad, strong points about it.
[00:02:39] I thought that the green of the grass allowed the movie to be very consistently colorful.
[00:02:47] Plus, despite the fact that it's all in one location, I thought that the direction was strong,
[00:02:53] and it offered enough variety with how they shoot the field, how they shoot the characters,
[00:03:00] the variations and concepts behind the look of the nightmares and dreams.
[00:03:07] So I never really found the movie to be that visually repetitive as much as it easily could be.
[00:03:16] Performance-wise, solid, no issues at all.
[00:03:20] Patrick Wilson, great actor.
[00:03:23] Whenever he pops up in a movie, there's always, to me, I get a sense of comfort, weirdly.
[00:03:29] He just has that effect and can really be in any genre.
[00:03:34] The score is quite good.
[00:03:39] And spoilers here, just in case.
[00:03:41] It is five years old, but the all-knowing rock is an interesting idea.
[00:03:49] It's maybe a little goofy, but I appreciate the symbolism and the kind of brainwashing of it
[00:03:59] with Patrick Wilson or whoever touches it, and that becomes the grass's or the god's servant.
[00:04:07] As well as the imagery of when you see inside certain characters' bodies,
[00:04:15] like you see the womb inside the pregnant woman,
[00:04:18] and the grass is filling the womb around the baby or the father.
[00:04:25] He touches it, and there's the grass filling the area around his heart.
[00:04:30] When the pregnant woman is all by herself towards the end in the darkness and the rain,
[00:04:38] and there's that grass tribe with the faces made out of grass,
[00:04:43] like the swirling groups of grass.
[00:04:45] And she sees all of the lost souls, the dead bodies in the roots of the soil.
[00:04:52] When Patrick Wilson crushes the head of his wife, that's a pretty insane visual
[00:05:00] and really gets the movie going a little bit more in terms of horror.
[00:05:07] In the final moments of the father who tries to redeem himself a little bit
[00:05:14] for having abandoned the mother when she got pregnant,
[00:05:18] and the young boy trying to warn the main couple to not go back in there
[00:05:24] because obviously they're not aware of what they're about to do in this situation.
[00:05:30] The message of taking lessons from other people, saying,
[00:05:35] hey, don't make the same mistake I just did.
[00:05:40] There are stretches.
[00:05:41] It's not that long.
[00:05:43] It's like an hour 40 or so.
[00:05:45] There are parts that drag that maybe don't get repetitive,
[00:05:49] but I feel like my interest sometimes went up and down.
[00:05:54] Whenever Patrick Wilson was on screen, I was focused.
[00:06:00] But then when it would get back into the conflict between the brother
[00:06:05] and then the father of his sister,
[00:06:07] and there's that weird mention of incestual feelings about the sister.
[00:06:12] It's weird and random, but whatever.
[00:06:15] Those sections would be by far my least favorite or the least interesting.
[00:06:22] Still, though, it's a very refreshingly creepy movie.
[00:06:28] I don't know what else could have been done
[00:06:30] with the amount of story that's there in the novella.
[00:06:33] It's not a big, sweeping, epic novel,
[00:06:36] so I don't think that we're going to get anything more than what this movie offers.
[00:06:43] That is a heavy 3.5 out of 5.
[00:06:47] I don't know if.
[00:06:48] That is a heavy 3.5 out of 5.