Movie Review: In the Tall Grass

In the Tall Grass ** / *****

Directed by: Vincenzo Natali.

Written by: Vincenzo Natali based on the novel by Joe Hill and Stephen King.

Starring: Laysla De Oliveira (Becky DeMuth), Avery Whitted (Cal Demuth), Patrick Wilson (Ross Humboldt), Will Buie Jr. (Tobin Humbolt), Harrison Gilbertson (Travis McKean), Rachel Wilson (Natalie Humboldt).

 

The short story by Stephen King and Joe Hill that is the basis of Vincenzo Natali’ new Netflix film is a lean, mean, nasty little story. It’s short and sweet – no more than 100 pages, that go by probably in less time than it takes to watch the film itself. It’s basically about two siblings – Irish twins as King and Hill call them – Becky and Cal, travelling across America by car. Becky is pregnant, and they are headed for California in theory because she is going to give the baby up for adoption – but she isn’t so sure. But then, while in the Midwest, driving by a field of nothing but tall grass, they hear a small boy call out for help. The two pull over and venture into the grass to help out. And what they find there is terrifying. The story is effective – but I wouldn’t call it one of King’s best by any means. To a certain extent, the story is a game for the siblings that they cannot win, and they are punished for no other reason than they happened to be nice people who wanted to help a child in peril. There’s no message there – just terror and misery.

 

It also wouldn’t seem like a story that would make an easy to translate to the screen. Essentially, it’s a few people trapped in really, really tall grass. In Natali though, they have hired the right director. Natali’s breakthrough film was Cube, a low budget Canadian sci fi film about a group of strangers trapped in a giant maze (yes, it’s in a Cube). So he at least has experience trapping people inside a maze that doesn’t make a lot of sense. And in the two decades since Cube, Natali has shown that he is an ultra-stylish director – doing some of the very episode of Hannibal – one of the most visually stunning shows of the decade (easily the most visually stunning on network TV). If nothing else, you have to give him credit for In the Tall Grass in that it is almost an entire 100 minute of people stuck in tall grass, and yet he finds ways to make it visually interesting, at times very scary, or incredibly intense.

 

Yet, In the Tall Grass doesn’t really work as a movie regardless of what Natali does with the direction. The film tries to expand on King and Hill’s story – adding another major character who wasn’t really in the book at all, who becomes a kind of hero – something the story doesn’t have at all. The film pulls the punches the book refused to pull – it doesn’t go to the dark and disturbing places the book goes to. I may not have loved the book, but the plot works better there. King and Hill proceed to the logical end point of the story, and refuse to back away. The movie doesn’t go to those places. And when you won’t go there, the silliness of the story comes through even more.

 

To make matters worse, the performances vary widely in quality. The best is definitely Patrick Wilson – who has always been a fine actor, but for the most part he specializes in bland characters. Here, cast against type, he truly is creepy. He really is the only actor who stands out at all though. Laysla De Oliveira is fine as Becky – and yet it’s a forgettable performance. Both Avery Whitted as her brother, and Harrison Gilbertson as the new character are actively, distractingly annoying.

 

I do give Netflix some credit – they keep trying to find some odd Stephen King stories to adapt – 1922, Gerald’s Game and now this, that present challenges to adapt. What they basically end up proving here is why this book wouldn’t really work on screen – especially is you’re going to soften it so much as to make it meaningless.