'In the Tall Grass' Movie Review

 

This had been sitting on my Netflix list for some time now.  I figured it was time to start cleaning house and finally knock it out.  I read the original novella back when it was originally published in Esquire, but that was some time ago.  I did write about it, but those articles were lost when Examiner shut down.  I do remember not being particularly blown away by it.  That was probably one of the reasons why I kept this one on the backburner for as long as I did.

To the movie's credit, it actually is a stronger work than the source material.  Where the story felt pretty thin, the movie has time to flesh out certain elements and give the characters more time to shine.  While the characters are still daft for never thinking to use their car horns as a way try to help get others out, they do act more intelligently here than they did in the story.  One character attempts to leave himself a trail by tying some of the grass stems in knots and he later uses a child as a sort of periscope to try to keep them oriented while they try to make their way back to the main road.  Neither effort works, but still, credit for clever thinking.  Surprisingly, nobody tries to set the field ablaze.  We see one character smoking early on, I thought for sure that it was going to be a "Chekhov's Gun" situation, but nope.  Even when they're convinced that they're not getting out, nobody suggests taking the field with them.

Speaking of, the field itself gets more to do.  The disorientation and relocation are still present, but we see that the field can even distort time itself.  It adds to the eerie, alien element of the field and gives the movie some interesting "timey wimey ball" elements that end up playing a pretty critical role in the plot.  The rock also gets more detail and focus brought to it.  We're never told what it is exactly, but we get a lot more detail as to how it works and what its attempting to accomplish.

That being said, despite the movie being well under 2 hours (an hour, 40) it still drags quite a bit.  The director does get a little over-indulgent at certain points, especially as the movie gets closer to the climax.  It also gets tough to care when you see characters die repeatedly only to pop back in later.  It makes sense, as it's shown that the characters have gone through several loops and they're all intersecting at various points, but it does undercut the tension quite a bit.

The cast all do a good job.  Patrick Wilson is probably the stand out, as he gets to play both friendly and menacing, sometimes at the same time.

As far as King adaptations go, this one's solid.  It's faithful enough, but it also goes in its own direction.  It does have problems, so I don't know if I'd call it a must watch, but there's enough good stuff here to say that it doesn't warrant a hard pass either.

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