In the Tall Grass

This is the 3rd Netflix feature film Stephen King adaptation (Gerald's Game, 1922) and, for what it's worth, I think they can surely make some more. "In the Tall Grass" is not flawless, but it's entertaining, aesthetically pleasing & there's great bits in an otherwise mixed bag.

A lot of people are and will call "In the Tall Grass" pointless or empty, and it's true that its biggest flaw is the near miniature plot. The story never leads to anything shocking, huge or, well, to nothing quite satisfying enough. The shallowness of the main story line is compensated with shabby side plots of some of the characters. Sadly, I have not expierenced the novella and can't do any comparisons. I've read a LOT of King though. Besides the story, there were other aspects that kept me watching & engaged. Compliments to the cinematographer and camera & sound crews - technically "In the Tall Grass" is a treat, the stylistic solutions add a lot to the atmosphere & the sound design is the kind that can give you goosebumps given that you have the hardware of a melomaniac. Besides the technical side of the movie the acting's also top level, as much as it could be taking into account the script & characters. You'll probably find yourself not caring for one or few of them, but if one thing's for sure it's that Patrick Wilson most definitely doesn't fail to entertain. The pacing is quite fine - the middle part might get slower but it picks up again.

Overall "In the Tall Grass" is a mood piece, if you're not looking for a lot of substance, this is a good horror movie to watch loudly & in the darkness. I'll eat up any Stephen King adaptation and this one's grantedly above average. My rating: 7/10.

I liked it. It was on the level of a really well adapted Stephen King TV movie. It's horror with a dash of science fiction. I can't think of anything more descriptive than that. It gets a 7 out of 10 because it doesn't really follow its own rules and the ending is one of those "Because I believe in love" magic endings rather than something that felt really earned. Then and the dialog is hit and miss.

The story seems to be pretty simple, and I was left wondering how the film can go on for 80 minutes. The story gets a little more complex as time goes on, more thrilling, suspenseful and more disturbing. I enjoyed it.

The problem seems to be that some people can't handle the delightful subtlety of some of King's work. Light on plot, sure, but that's not the point. There's a single POINT of plot and everything else is only there to frame it and illustrate it. King thrives in a terrible sense of wrong. Disjointed, twisted, tied-in-knots, all of it ...wrong-but-real. Especially in the short-stories and novellas, King hyper-focuses on a POINT of something terrible and wraps detail around it.

Some adaptations are better than others. This one is really not bad. It's pretty good. The sense of wrong is prevalent, but not insistent. I love the concept of knotted, non-linear time. But even that isn't all of it. (And if you want to look, there ARE sub-plots in the relationships between the characters. But they aren't the point!)

I'm a country-boy. I grew up in farm country. And not even truly LARGE farms, by national standards! As a kid with wide freedom to roam, (free-range, as they say) there was a fear, a wariness of things like the wide corn fields. They are so huge, so endless. Half-way through you start to wonder if you are lost, how you might get out; the doubts begin to creep-in and fear takes root. Things turn sinister as the leaves of the corn give you sharp, paper-cut-like pain, drawing blood as you run through it. ...And that's in the day-time. Try it at night... and the Unknown can grow to fill the edges of the whole world. I know it. I loved it. And I carried a cheap samurai sword everytime I went out to the woods or the fields after dark.

There's some of that in this movie. And with an actor that makes a really good bad-guy. And special effects that do very well to portray a terrible, amorphous, unnameable concept.

This is a well done move. Salute to the director, who took a short novella of treacherous ideas and made a decent 90+ minutes.

While traveling to San Diego, Cal DeMuth (Avery Whitted) stops the car nearby a tall grass field since his pregnant sister Becky (Laysla De Oliveira) is sick and need to vomit. They overhear the cry for help from a young boy and decide to look for the boy in the field. Soon they realize the field is a supernatural place that manipulates time and space and there is no way out from the tall grass.

"In the Tall Grass" is an intriguing supernatural horror movie with a story based on a novel of Stephen King that recalls a creepy episode of The Twilight Zone. The conclusion is open to interpretation but if the boy succeeds to stop Cal and Becky, Travis will probably never look for them and consequently would be also saved. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Campo do Medo" ("Field of the Fear")