In the Tall Grass (2019)

Director: Vincenzo Natali
Writer(s): Natali, from a short story by Stephen King and Joe Hill
Starring: Laysla De Oliveiri, Avery Whitted, Patrick Wilson and Will Buie Jr.

Usually, the movies my wife and I watch are carefully and meticulously chosen, sometimes too much so. We’ll spend several minutes switching between several different streaming services, until we finally find something that tickles our fancy. In a best case scenario, we will choose 3-5 movies and have the other person narrow it down to one. In almost all cases, the process takes way longer than it should. 

In the Tall Grass, however, was different in that it's one of the few movies that we just blindly picked. We knew nothing about it going in, but all it took was one view of the trailer to suck us in.  It's a horror tale written by Stephen King and his son Joe Hill that takes place in the titular setting: A seemingly neverending field of tall grass. 

The plot finds Becky, a pregnant woman who's traveling to San Diego with her nerdy brother, Cal. It is unclear at first why they're traveling such great distance, but becomes one of many revelations throughout the film. They are traveling through the fields of Kansas when Becky starts to feel sick. Naturally, Cal starts the car to give her time to recover. As they’re getting ready to continue their trek, they hear a voice calling out for help from inside the tall weeds. 

It sounds like a young boy who is trapped in there and begging for help. Cal seems slightly unfazed - “annoyed” might be a more appropriate term -  and wants to continue on but Becky decides that they should stay and help. She is pregnant, after all, so presumably the thought of abandoning a child is too much for her. In an effort to find the lost child, they enter the grass.

In case you weren't already clued in, the grass isn't all that it appears to be. It's an almost shape-shifting world that seems to decide the fates of those inside it. If it wants you to find someone, you will find them. If it wants you to get separated from someone, you'll get separated. It’s like it controls the motions and actions of everyone trapped inside. It sounds kind of stupid, but it's pulled off fairly well, for the most part.

It doesn’t take long for things to go awry: Becky and Cal are separated almost immediately, and are unable to find each other. He stumbles onto Tobin, the boy whose cries for help are the ones that lured them out in the first place; he’s a creepy-looking, ominous child who seems to be hiding more than he’s letting on. Meanwhile, Becky stumbles onto Ross, Tobin’s father, who has also been separated from Natalie, his wife. He promises Becky to help her find a way out.

Since this is based on a story co-written by Stephen King, we know things can’t just be this straightforward. As if the setting wasn’t strong enough, we’re introduced to a magical fucking rock that has some sort of weird powers. Alright, whatever. I’m a big fan of ambiguity, which the film already had in spades, so to place some of the outcome of the story on a magical rock just kind of ruined some of the momentum for me. Sure, it’s mysterious, as well, but come on…it’s a magical fucking rock. 

Aside from the setting, the best feature of In the Tall Grass is the way it plays with time: We already know things aren’t what they seem inside the grass, but the scope of it slowly becomes evident. I’ll admit the “twist”, where we start to understand what’s going on, is appropriately trippy and also adds to the cryptic feel. Eventually, it breaks down into a hallucinatory nightmare that reminded me a lot of the excellent horror film The Dark and the Wicked. The line between fantasy and reality blurs, leaving not only the characters confused as to what’s going on, but the viewers as well. 

I’ve not read the short story by King and Hill, but turning any novel into a film is hard work; stretching a short story into a feature length film might be even harder. Personally, I felt like there’s too much going on, especially when the setting itself is strong enough to stand out on its own. It’s like the chef who ruins a perfect dish by adding too many spices. The villain is rather ho-hum and, admittedly, doesn’t really feel necessary to the story; after all, it’s more or less the grass who’s the main antagonist. And by the time the magical rock was introduced, I'll admit I partially lost interest in the story.

It doesn't always entirely work, and it leads up to a predictable and slightly corny finish, but overall, In the Tall Grass makes just enough use of its setting to deliver a creepy enough atmosphere that limps across the finish line. It won't top any lists of noteworthy horror films - not even for the year it was made - but it’s not one that should top your list of regrets.

RATING: 5.5/10

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Cube (1997)

Director: Vincenzo Natali
Writer(s): Natali, André Bijelic, and Graeme Manson
Starring: Nicole de Boer, David Hewlett, Maurice Dean Wint, and Nicky Guadagni

I saw my first trailer for Cube preceding another movie I was watching way back in the days of VHS. It always looked interesting to me, but became one of those movies that I kept putting off for some reason or another, until I just kind of forgot all about it. Upon re-stumbling on it just the other day, I made sure that wouldn't happen again, and made immediate plans to sit down and watch it.

I don't know how this possibly happened, considering I physically watched the trailer numerous times, but I was always under the impression that this was a foreign film. There's just something about its minimalistic plot that suggests something more subtle than the general in-your-face attitude of most Hollywood features, with the entirety of its story taking place within the confines of several shifting rooms, each one 14' x 14'. Visual effects are kept to a minimum (a good thing, considering they have the appearance of old computer game cutscenes), the violence is restrained, and it places its focus on the characters themselves, rather than the situation they find themselves in—in other words, it's the antithesis of the American film (I guess technically it is a “foreign” film, having been shot in Canada; it played theatrically at just 16 screens nationwide).

Bizarre setting aside, the skeleton of Cube's story is pretty familiar stuff: Five complete strangers awaken to find themselves trapped inside the mysterious box, with no memories of who abducted them, or how they got there. As an interesting aside, all of the characters are named after prisons: There's Quentin, the rough-and-tumble “leader” who is a cop; Leaven, a young nerdy college girl; Holloway, a middle-aged female doctor; Rennes, an arrogant escape artist that has broken out of several prisons; and Worth, a suicidal man with no immediately-obvious talents.

Eventually, they deduce that they are trapped in one large cube, that is 26 rooms across, and a whopping 17,576 rooms total. So getting out is just a matter of finding the proper route through a maze, right? Well, of course it wouldn't be that easy: some of the rooms are booby-trapped in various ways that mean instant death for those that blindly wander in, such as motion sensors that activate metal grids capable of slicing through bone, or electrochemical sensors that can detect body heat—that second type they find out the hard way, when Rennes jumps into a room and is sprayed in the face with acid. That's not a good look.

Gradually, it becomes apparent that each of them are there to serve a specific purpose. Quentin, being the authority figure, is a natural born leader capable of keeping his cool under pressure; Leaven is a mathematical wizard, who discovers the secret to the numerical “codes” that label each room; Worth is an architect who was commissioned to build the cube's outer shell, unaware of the horrors they planned to fill it with; and Holloway...well she's best suited to take care of a surprise sixth visitor: mentally-handicapped Kazan, whom most of the others see as little more than a hassle.

As the story gradually starts to reveal itself in layers, it also reveals just how unimaginative it really is. All of them think the others are against them, and are certain that one of them knows more than they are letting on. Paranoia is a natural thought process that everyone goes through at one point or another, and it would certainly manifest itself in a room full of complete strangers stuck in a foreign...cube. But the acting does nothing to further the illusion of realism; nor does the writing, which sticks to pretty standard formulas, refusing to dig any deeper into the individual plights of each character. One character does turn out to be a bad guy, but his true nature is revealed early on with an evil look that comes out of nowhere, along with ominous musical accompaniment that nudges us to acknowledge it...in other words, there are no unforeseen twists, and once the coolness of the idea wears off, so does its grip.

That being said, I have a soft spot for low budget films, where filmmakers often have to find creative solutions, and Cube is almost a masterpiece in budget-cutting simplicity. The entire film was shot in the same 14' x 14' space, with only the backgrounds changing: different colored wall panels give the illusion of shooting in several different individual cubes. A separate half-set was also designed for scenes that take place in the short “hallways” between rooms. The door latches that open each cube was also made out of materials found in any hardware store. That none of these things are noticeable is a pretty impressive technical achievement in and of itself, and while the digital effects are pretty dated, their infrequent use doesn't do much damage.

Despite its growing appeal, Cube is a surprisingly formulaic mess that is helped along by some inventive visual tricks and clear talent from director and co-writer Vincenzo Natali (who sounds like he should be running an Italian eatery instead). But it slowly becomes apparent that the cube is the only interesting idea in the entire film, and once the intrigue of that wears off—and it will wear off—it's nothing more than a straightforward character study about characters that just aren't interesting enough to study in the first place.

RATING: 4.5/10

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