“And it seems that you can also smoke.“
Starting gun of the Sitges Festival 2023 , “In the tall grass” is, today, the last adaptation of a work by Stephen King , which comes to reaffirm the interest of the OTT Netflix by the media author of Maine and the good mix between the company and the organization of the contest. Much has been said, for and against, in the forums of the fantastic of the convenience of opening a film festival with a film that the next day will be available on demand . Surely for the organization the really important thing was the expectation that will generate the red carpet tonight bringing together director Vincenzo Natali and media actor Patrick Wilson.
A Quick Snapshot for the Movie
Original title: In the tall Grass
Nationality: United States | Year: 2023
Director: Vincenzo Natali
Screenplay: Vincenzo Natali (Stephen King’s novel, Joe Hill)
Interpreters: Patrick Wilson, Laysla De Oliveira, Harrison Gilbertson, Rachel Wilson, Will Buie Jr., Tiffany Helm, Avery Whitted
Plot: A field of grass does not release anyone who enters it
The film transforms the more than 60 pages of the original novel into an image for an hour and forty minutes, so, in this case, the saying that it takes less time to watch the movie than reading the book has to be taken by the hair .
Two brothers go into an immense field of grass to help a child who calls from inside asking for help. They enter without knowing it in a labyrinth of temporal space dimensions, where the only thing that cannot change is what is dead. Inside the camp they will find members of an equally trapped family. All will join forces to get out of the influence of the mysterious cultivation and a mound of rock that seems to be the cause of the events.
The director of ” Cube ” shows that he has not lost his talent when it comes to building a disturbing and claustrophobic atmosphere. It gives us about 30 fascinating initial minutes , where the flashbacks enrich an already mysterious situation. The arrival of the brothers, she pregnant, and the entry into the field is almost immediate; what grants a powerful initial dynamism that serves to alleviate a little the drift in which the script enters the central part . Despite the powerful use of virtuous planes (there is one with 2 drops of water that is fantastic) that creates Natali, the game of superposition of dimensions to the “Coherence” or “Triangle”that the title proposes ends up being too redundant and confusing; so the initial oppression of the viewer becomes tedious.
Nothing is really explained in “In the tall grass.” That should not necessarily be bad, if not for the insistence of the product to make you believe that there is some consistency in what is happening. The characters, which are solidly built and that expose a wealth of solvent conflicts, behave insteadtoo erratic so that one is encouraged to accompany them in the adventure.
The very fans of the writer may appreciate with more value the result of this title. Well, despite not doing it officially, + both the book and the movie seem to create a confluence point for several of King’s works: like “The Boys of the Corn”, “The Church of the Bones”, “The Dark Tower” or “The talisman”*. They will also enjoy because, the way in which everything is narrated, breathes the essences of the writer.
Correct performances, with a Patrick Wilson a little overdone when he starts doing bad and an excellent visual invoice, with a couple of unpleasant sequences, make the product is above the approved. But from now I assure you that it will be overcome with growing by many of the proposals that the festival brings us.
