In the Tall Grass Quick View Like Mowing the Lawn: You Receive a Mess After Grade: D+

Source: IMDB

In The Tall Grass is the third below mediocre Stephen King adaptation in the year of 2019. What is the plot of this movie you might ask?! Well think of 1997’s Cube... Only less interesting, the gimmick gets old pretty quickly as nothing makes much sense, oh and lots and lots of GRASS! You know I was wondering why this Netflix film made me think of Cube? Well the director of Cube Vincenzo Natali so happens to direct/wrote this film. Now I watched Cube earlier this year and thought is was a solid horror film, cool concept as I also loved the math formula portion. Besides Cube, you may say the only other film Natali has made that is somewhat significant is Splice, an interesting average film but you know what’s more weird than the film Splice?! Watching it with your entire family... Not a family movie. I guess theres a couple things I liked about In the Tall Grass. Patrick Wilson’s performance by far stands out as the best thing about the entire film, he gives a great performance as a victim/mad man whom gets trapped in the tall grass. It’s such a bizarre over the top performance, especially when his character is in love with this rock... But it’s done so well that it’s not at all cheesy, but also flat out entertaining, I’d say without him this film would just be bad. Even though this film reminds me of Cube, The Blair Witch Project, Blair Witch, and even the one episode in Spongebob where Spongebob, Patrick, and Squidward are all trapped in a seaweed meadow as they listen to a magic conch shell... It still maintains to have a cool concept. People getting tricked by a crying child, so they can lead them to the tall grass and have them trapped there as they try to figure out how to get out... Though not original still neat. I liked some of the Score as well, some nice dark composed music. Lastly Will Buie Jr. had a nice performance as another creepy kid in a Stephen King adaptation... For the third film in a row. The compliments end as I thought In The Tall Grass was a bit of a mess, repetitive, and even boring. There’s an element in the film I don’t get at all and that’s characters resurrecting constantly. I would’ve liked the film better if characters try to navigate a way out of the tall grass, but somehow characters revive from the dead over and over again as I’m like... How is that possible?! Apparently this is from a short story so I don’t know if this was entirely made up in the screenplay or it was originally thought of by Stephen King, but it has plot holes to where it just makes no sense at all. I thought the whole ordeal with the magic rock and the weird drawings on the rock with the whole rituals is just a bunch of nonsense. It just comes off incredibly stupid at times, I even paused it at one point because it became so obnoxious that I needed to take a break from watching. There is not a whole lot of interest going on within the story taking place. With a concept like this: You have to keep us engaged and interested in our characters. With Cube you kind of can get away with it because we’re more interested in how these characters are going to get out of each room, although I’d say the characters in Cube are more developed than in this film. Majority of the characters are one note, we know little about the brother and sister driving to San Diego and the whole situation with the kid, but even they aren’t that interesting. This film has a simple concept, but needed to be more character driven because this premise gets old very fast as not much happens, so we need characters to keep us engaged within the story and because they’re so flat... This film is consistently boring and tiresome to watch. I also did not like the brother and sister played by Avery Whitted and Laysla De Oliveria, both played bad performances in this film too. Not much left to say honestly, felt I said all I needed to say about this film. Overall, In the Tall Grass was not that good. I don’t recommend this film, just watch Cube instead, much more interesting and entertaining too. All three Stephen King adaptations have not delivered, perhaps Doctor Sleep is the next victim... Oh No.- Mitch Smietana