Don’t Offer to Help: In the Tall Grass
By R. J. F.
If you hear someone calling out for help in an area you can’t see, just walk away.
I have a couple of friends I met during my last years of working in retail that I’m still friends with. Every year for the past five years or so, we have tried to do something spooky and fun for Halloween season. We have only missed one year and that was October of 2020 when everything was still shut down due to Covid. This was around the time that Netflix launched its extension called “Netflix Party”. This was where you could watch a movie with others at the same time from multiple devices in separate homes. It even had a chat feature. My friends and I decided that since we couldn’t physically go out to do something together that year, we would watch a scary movie from our own homes together. I don’t know who chose In the Tall Grass, but I remember being intrigued the entire time
The film is a psychological mind fuck for both the characters in the film and the audience watching at home. It starts out simply enough: a brother and sister, Cal and Becky, are driving cross country because Becky is pregnant and going to give the baby to a couple in San Diego. Becky, being about six months pregnant, needs Cal to pull over because she’s feeling carsick. He pulls over next to a field of extremely tall and dense grass in the middle of nowhere. That’s it; that’s how it starts, but it gets eerie quite quickly after they hear what sounds like a child calling for help from somewhere deep inside the field. As soon as they step foot off of the road and into the grass to try and help the kid, shit goes immediately south.
It’s hard to tell where the plot begins and ends because, as Cal and Becky roam through the grass, seemingly in circles trying to find the kid, they get separated, and it becomes impossible to find each other. It’s obvious to not only Becky and Cal that they have entered some kind of alternate universe from the moment they stepped foot in this field, but to the audience, as well. Everything after the first 10 minutes starts to spiral into stomach churning anxiety for Becky, Cal, and the people watching.
The first time I watched this movie with my friends, the chat was lit up with messages of confusion. Cal and Becky eventually find each other, then find Tobin, the little kid that was calling for help. Along with Tobin, they come across his father, Ross, his mother, their dog, and by a chance of fate, Becky’s estranged boyfriend ends up there, too. We didn’t know which way was up, down, left, right, or just bizarre. There were a lot of twists and turns that kept us on our toes, wondering if these characters would ever make it out of the grass alive.
Patrick Wilson is lost in the tall grass with strangers. In the Tall Grass (2019).
In addition to the confusion, there’s the added element of this giant boulder in the middle of the field that Ross claims will “reveal all” to Cal and Becky if they just touch it. Ross is a freaky guy from the beginning of his appearance in the grass. There’s something completely unnerving about him from the moment he enters the scene, but Becky and Cal feel like they need to stick by him in order to make their way out of the field. It’s easy to figure out that Ross is the antagonist of the bunch, as he rants and raves about “being saved” and “repenting for sins” while stalking, mentally torturing, and physically pummeling the other characters. His presence adds a menacing air to the plot.
My only negative comments about this movie are that some of the dialogue and acting is a little bit over the top at certain points, the ending is a little predictable, and there are almost too many elements to keep track of. With the circular plot of no real beginning or middle — no real way to figure out what time the characters are in, whether they are dead, alive, ghosts, or in another universe — it makes it tough to keep up with the film. The ending does clear up a majority of the confusion, but it’s too simple to be impactful. Did I also mention that Becky starts to have hallucinations of what look like tribal grass people who want her baby? Like I said, a lot to keep track of.
Harrison Gilbertson, Laysla De Oliveira, and Avery Whitted search for a way out. In the Tall Grass (2019).
Even with its faults, the movie kept my attention the entire time because I wanted to know what the fuck was going on and how it was going to end. With so many ins and outs, I found myself muttering over and over again, “What the hell?” I wouldn’t consider this a typical Halloween movie because, many times, Halloween movies are about thrashers and slashers, but, In the Tall Grass is engrossing and creepy through and through.
