Rating of
2.5/4
Tall grass is scarier than supernatural rocks
Andulamb - wrote on 08/26/22
Stephen King tends to ruin his stories by going overboard with supernatural elements. For example, compare the film version of The Shining to King's novel; the film wisely eliminates all the ridiculousness of the hedge maze and the boiler. Then there's It, with its ridiculous ending involving a giant alien spider. I strongly suspect that King comes up with his stories by spinning a large wheel of plot elements: first spin, creepy clown; second spin, sewer; third spin, giant alien spider. Viola! Anyway, In the Tall Grass suffers from the same sort of unnecessary supernatural nonsense. The first third or half of the movie is great: people get lured into a huge field of tall grass from which they can't escape. As a kid, I walked a few rows into a cornfield, went a distance down one row, moved to another row, etc., and when I finally walked back to the road it wasn't there. The field was askew, with the rows not actually parallel to the road on the side of the field I was on, so what was the sixth row at the point where I went into the field was the thirtieth row at the point where I was trying to leave the field. So I know what it's like to feel trapped in a field, and this movie captures the escalating panic of that situation. But then the movie's initial plot, which captivated me, goes off the tracks in typical Stephen King style with an ancient evil stone that turns people into its raving disciples. The purpose of this stone's agenda is never made clear -- possibly because there can't be any logical reason for it. What does it gain by populating a field of grass with crazed worshippers? The movie doesn't seem to care. It would have been much better if the story had remained that of a group of people trying to find some way to escape from an incomprehensible maze of grass.
