WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Netflix's In the Tall Grass, now streaming.
Following The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan's career took some hits, especially with 2008's The Happening. The Mark Wahlberg-led post-apocalyptic thriller detailed a mysterious pandemic that inexplicably caused mass suicides across the globe, but audiences and critics alike panned the film.
A decade later, Netflix's In the Tall Grass finally gets the existential story of the plants of the world rising up against humanity right. In fact, for those who loved The Happening's concept, In the Tall Grass accomplishes what Shyamalan's dramatic flick lacked. As a result, it has what we really want to see.
The trees in The Happening felt like a flat plot driver and didn't have any character at all. Yet that made them an unconvincing antagonist, which contrasts with something like Netflix's Bird Box with its invisible, mysterious beings that drove people to suicide on sight. Granted, In the Tall Grass, adapted from Stephen King and Joe Hill's novella from seven years ago, doesn't make people off themselves. However, this force of nature -- an acreage literally existing in the middle of America -- takes fans on a psychological and horror-driven ride for almost 90 minutes, a feat Shyamalan couldn't pull off with his aloof cast.
From the movie's start to its finish, this lush but sinister area is scary and invokes tension and suspense. In the story, a pair of siblings, Cal (Avery Whitted) and Becky (Laysla De Oliveira), get trapped in the cornfield-esque maze as they search for a young boy, Tobin (Will Buie Jr.), after hearing his cries and assuming he's lost inside. Soon they realize they're in a closed time loop. We see Tobin's family getting trapped, as well as Travis (Harrison Gilbertson), Becky's ex, in a series of sequences that director Vincenzo Natali cleverly plays up by bending timelines. Each family influences the other to enter the field. And once inside they see themselves at various times entering to save each other, unaware of the dominoes they're knocking down. It's a trip sci-fi fans will love.
But that's just the slow drama of the film -- the foundation really -- because as much as the grass provides a temporal cage and overall location, it also operates as a haunting character in its own right. The blades sway like monsters that guide people and trap them and, also, act like foot soldiers for something bigger: the mystical rock in the middle of the field. This is the field's heartbeat, an extension of God's judgment, instead of a population control scheme or an eco-statement about protecting the planet like the plot of The Happening.
What makes this grass, this Happening, all the more sinister is that, when the Earth opens up in the finale, we see the muddy Purgatory under the field. This indicates that the grass is really there to test the families and see if they keep making the wrong decisions in the time loop. It's not about pushing people to kill themselves, the grass takes the lives only of those who show themselves to be deserving. This has emotional heft and philosophical weight, not to mention with a bunch of people in grass masks popping up from the roots of the field like a cult of monsters, we get a murky, bleak and jump-scare effect that Shyamalan's film could only dream of.
In addition, watching Tobin's dad, Ross (Patrick Wilson), become possessed by the rock and try to kill the teens in the field as if he's judge, jury and executioner is pretty intriguing. So is witnessing Becky being fed her dead baby by the insane father. These scenes all fall in line with the demented stories King and Hill love to pen.
In short, Shyamalan's film couldn't bring nature to life, but Natali's movie succeeds by giving the grass a voice and a purpose. Both films are about nature judging humanity, but In the Tall Grass makes it a better villain.
Written and directed by Vincenzo Natali, In the Tall Grass is now streaming on Netflix, and stars Patrick Wilson, Laysla de Oliveira and Harrison Gilbertson.