The Tall Man.

Okay I'm going to openly admit, I done goofed. I've been using IMDb's recommendations for horror movies for me and my friend and just me in general, one of the horror movies I watched in the past had this in the recommendations. I start to look around for stuff about the film, and everywhere I looked I saw talk of Slender Man with basically every bit of info around this film. It then wasn't until I actually watched it myself I realised that not only is it not a horror film, it has fuck all to do with Slender Man either. Oops. Oh well, it came out in 2012 and the review is finished anyway!

I once again come into this with little information thanks to Wik-...my research not coming back with anything. All I know is this is a French movie, in English starring Jessica Biel, I don't remember the last time I saw her in anything! Anyway, let's dig in!

The Tall Man is a pretty classic example of a film that was probably a lot better on paper than on the screen. The film itself has moments where the clever ideas slip through, but for the most part the whole thing is told in such a convoluted fashion, it's difficult to tell if you're really following it or if you've even understood it by the end. A majority of the film plays in flashback, we open to see our protagonist, Julia Denning (Jessica Biel) has been brutally beaten while looking for something - we assume the children, including her own. Also the awesome Stephen McHattie is on the case Lieutenant Dodd! Set in some deadbeat piece of shit town, we learn that a majority of its shittiness is because the town folk are being bullied by a supernatural entity. Something is out there, taking the children. Due to the large body of children going missing, and with how they seem to get snatched without a fuss, a myth starts to develop...the myth of the Tall Man. It isn't until forty-five minutes in, when the big twist lands, that the real plot of the film really starts with basically the first forty-five minutes being a long series of red herrings that could have probably been condensed down to about ten minutes. However this is really where the film started to lose me, the twist is huge and comes completely from nowhere and changes the whole dynamic of the film. As far as I understood it Denning's was the person taking the children, down into a series of tunnels which run under the town, where her husband smuggled them to better lives...for some reason and he got away with it by pretending to be dead...for some reason. Huh?

The Tall Man is incredibly hard to review, mainly because aside from a stupidly complicated and underwhelming story, it isn't actually that badly made. It's competently put together, trying nothing flashy but that means it's a lot harder to make mistakes and it pays off, even if the film isn't that interesting visually. The film has a decent cast and once again the acting is competent. Everything is just okay, not good enough for me to praise but not bad enough for me to rip on, The Tall Man takes the easy way and it pays off.

If I was to have any complaints of this film other than how convoluted it is, it would probably be that it is boring. In the end, so much of what we see, has actually anything to do with anything and even less to do with the actual plot of the film. It just plods along at its own slow pace, ignorant of the queue of traffic behind it beeping their horns.The film has the long running time of one hour forty five minutes but that should be to fill your movie with more content, not stretch what you have even thinner. This could have been condensed down to a forty minute TV pilot, easy.

Man what is it with my films and horror icons and Supernatural stars? This film has both Ellen from Supernatural (the gorgeous Samantha Ferris) and Jodelle Ferland, who in recent years seems to have tried to turn up in every horror film she can.

So do I recommend it? I think how much you'll enjoy this film will depend on what you take in with you. I admit I fucked up, but of course for me it was too late, I was already expecting something horror and Slender Man like and ended up with this convoluted mess. But maybe, just maybe, if you go into this knowing it is a crime thriller involving kidnapped children, you might just be able to enjoy this. Other than that though, this film sucks.

Think About It!

-Locke