In the Tall Grass

MOVIE #1,048 • 🍿🍿🍿 • 07.04.23 Look, I understand that the writer-director of this Stephen King/Joe Hill (King’s son) adaptation also made Cube and some other seemingly beloved films from ~20 years ago that I haven’t seen yet, but HOLY SHIT is this movie a mess. I actually spent a good half-hour on Reddit reading a bunch of commenters doing the most insane acrobatics explaining why this wasn’t a hot pile of garbage. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen another movie that made less sense. And, in fact, I gotta give the movie some credit for just being so relentlessly illogical: just a masterclass in “anything could mean anything but also everything”… in other words, complete nonsense. The plot description for the novella is similarly oblique, but this diverges so significantly in countless directions that it’s in another ballpark completely.

I like weird, “hard to figure out” stuff as much as the next guy, but every wacky element here in this horror time-loop seemed to be in service of covering up some previous, gaping plot hole. And it’s wash/rinse/repeat in this mode for the entirety of its 90-minute runtime which felt so much longer.

---

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,047 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,049 ⫸

---

In the Tall Grass is a 2019 Canadian supernatural horror drama film written and directed by Vincenzo Natali. It is based on Stephen King and Joe Hill's 2012 novella of the same name. It stars Harrison Gilbertson, Laysla De Oliveira, Avery Whitted, Will Buie Jr., Rachel Wilson, and Patrick Wilson. It was released on September 20, 2019.