In The Tall Grass, By The Books Horror with a Twist

Since the IT film remake, Stephen King's works have become relevant again and studios are whipping up books to spin into new film IPs like it's going out of fashion. Cue Netflix's cash in on the action: In The Tall Grass.

Before I go any further, spoilers within.

The trailer was pretty cool, it was tense and exciting and it had Patrick Wilson in it who I think is a rather underrated actor and he's been great playing Ed Warren in the Blumhouse horror films. So me and the missus plonked our butts in bed on a Sunday night and gave it a whirl and well I can safely say my wife did not enjoy it. Her words were "too much fucking grass", to be exact. I on the other hand, would not say I didn't enjoy it but neither did I enjoy it if that makes any sense. I was compelled to watch it, the premise was interesting enough for me to want to watch it to the end but unfortunately there is no "ahhh" moment at the end. It just wraps itself up fairly tidily and ends. 

The films biggest issue is the lack of character development, a group of people are just thrown in the field with no actual backstory save for Becky and Travis, the latter of which comes looking for Becky after she went missing for so long. I actually liked Travis and he was the only real likeable character in the whole film. Oddly enough, I think judging from a quick read of Wikipedia, Travis is unique to the film. But yeah, with such paper thin characters it hard to care. It's not like the film has a load of disposable characters to kill off in interesting ways it spends most of it's time with Becky, Travis and Ross (the film's acting villain). That's some slim pickings for a film that's almost two hours.

I liked the whole deal with the rock in the field and that it was never clear if the rock manipulated the local space and time or if the field itself had become sentient due to the rock. It had that Lovecraftian spookiness to it, but the way the film wraps undermines the laws the films teaches in the beginning and rather than go for an interesting and gloomier end it goes for a cheap and unsatisfying happy ending.

So is it worth your time? Well at least it won't hit your wallet as part of Netflix's lineup. But honestly, there are better films to watch for an hour and a half. The ending is fairly weak and is a bit of a slap in the face for anyone that sat through the entire film. Most of the run time is in the grass, maybe twenty minutes of it occur outside the grass, so be warned. You may find yourself a tad bored.