Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #8 In the Tall Grass

 Another day, another crappy Stephen King adaptation.

I read the source story recently, a joint effort by Stephen King and son Joe Hill, found in a short story collection, Full Throttle, by Hill.  It was a solid story: unsettling, gross, easily imagined in one's mind's eye.  And that's the problem, I think, with so many SK adaptions.  He (and also JH) writes so vividly and so matter-of-factly that it is easy to picture what's going on, to "see" it clearly, even if it involves vampires or sewer clowns or giant rats or malevolent fields of grass.  Here, it just seems silly, like a lethal game of Marco Polo in a hayfield.

The story is this: pregnant Becky and her big brother Cal are heading across the country so Becky can give her baby up for adoption to a California couple.  Somewhere in the heartland (Kansas, I think), they stop so she can throw up (morning sickness).  They hear voices calling for help from inside a vast field of tall (like six-plus feet high) grass, a little boy and then, later, the boy's mom.  The siblings go into the field to try to help but it become clear very quickly that once in the tall grass, you will never get out.  They become separated and time and space become wonky, moving them around, keeping them apart, keeping them from getting back to the road.

In the story, they meet the kid, Tobin, and the kid's dad, Ross, who has become crazy because of [movie reasons].  The mom/wife is dead and Tobin and Ross are starving and dehydrated.  It doesn't really end well for anyone.  In the movie, a whole new character is added - Travis, the kid who knocked Becky up.  He has come to Kansas looking for the siblings because they've been gone for two months, having never reached California, but somehow, with the wonky time, gets to the field first and is the one who lures Tobin and his family in ... it's confusing.  I get that they needed to bulk up the story to get to movie length but, sigh.  It just didn't work for me.  Plus there are people with grass for heads and root people buried beneath the field.

If you read online articles, you can find the ending "explained" - feel free to do so.  The movie ending is certainly less bleak than the story.  I wasn't impressed, although Patrick Wilson (slumming here) does his best to chew the scenery as crazed father/grass-acolyte Ross.

Seriously though - where are all the good horror movies at?