IN THE TALL GRASS

In The Tall Grass is a Netflix film based on a novella Stephen King wrote with his son, Joe Hil. And it is everything you would expect from the words “Netflix film” and “novella”.

In The Tall Grass is directed by Vincenzo Natali, the man behind Cube, a film I famously love. And In The Tall Grass is injected with a big dose of that Cubeessence. The film involves people running around in tall grass and doubling back on themselves and being unable to get out of the tall grass. Imagine the movie Cube but instead of being stuck in a series of cubes they’re stuck in long grass.

I am big into long grass. Can’t explain that one too you. But long grass, I’m a big fan. That scene in The Lost World where they’re like, “Don’t go into the long grass!” and it’s cause there are raptors in the long grass and then the raptors start chasing them through the long grass. That’s the only good bit in that very bad movie. Long grass, for me, was the break out star of that Jurassic Parksequel.

In The Tall Grass is not great, and I think it suffers from existing in 2019 on Netflix. This movie needed to be on VHS in 1996. You’d see the trailer for it after the “Make a better choice! Ratings advice" ad, and you’d be like “What’s that Tall Grass movie?” and you’d rent it along with Broken Arrow and Happy Gilmore, and it would end up becoming a staple that you’d watch several times over the next two decades because you’d always kind of forget that it wasn’t good but there was something about ‘tall grass’ that made you think it’d be fun to watch again. What I’m saying is that there’s a world where In The Tall Grassis Cube.

The plot of In The Tall Grass isn’t super important. There are a handful of characters who at some point in time pull over to the side of a road next to a large field of tall grass, where they hear the voice of a boy calling to them from inside the grass and they walk into the grass to try and help. They then get stuck in that grass FOREVER and Patrick Wilson is in there too. There are time loops, and a big ominous obelisk and lots and lots of tall grass.

But could you maybe squeeze me, Peter Jones, into Netflix’s In The Tall Grass? Why not!