Disclaimer: Contains Spoilers
Life is full of choices which come in a variety of scales, from deciding to take the bus or your car to buying a new house. In Netflix’s remake of Stephen King’s In The Tall Grass, we learn that the choices we make are essential to our fates. We don’t typically see the immediate effects of daily decisions—except when you’re in the tall grass and every decision you make is critical.
In the film, two siblings named Becky and Cal enter an area of tall grass after hearing a boy crying out for help. They learn that this young boy’s name is Tobin, and his mother and father are also lost. When the three characters are in the grass, they begin to learn that time isn’t linear and the grass doesn’t move still things, but moves everything else: if they stay by a dead animal or person, they will be able to find the other people. Becky’s ex-boyfriend Travis, who is the father of her unborn daughter, comes looking for her after she has been gone for two months. However, once he’s inside the grass, time shifts and he has now entered before Becky and Cal. Strange things start happening, including people appearing dead and alive at the same time. For instance, Cal is continuously killed by Tobin’s father, only realizing this when he sees his dead body beside him. Additionally, Cal and Becky begin to realize that there isn’t one single timeline going on, but multiple.
The concept of multiple realities is exciting for some, but terrifying for others. Sure, there could be a reality where you didn’t get married or where you choose a different career path, but do we really want to be wondering what could have been? In the film, we see that multiple realities are exhausting. Constantly being exposed to them eventually wears you out. At the same time, being exposed to a different reality for a short time can give you a sense of clarity. Through the multiple realities in the film, characters make choices that turn out to be wrong or right, or somewhere in between. Until they can make the right choices, they can’t find their way out of the tall grass.
In order to gain control of the grass and hopefully leave, the characters have to touch an energetically charged rock. Cal, Becky, and Tobin are scared of the rock for most of the film, as it caused Tobin’s father to become mad. In this scene, he attempts to convince everyone to touch the rock and threatens to kill them if they don’t. Everyone is so scared that they too will go mad that they don’t touch the rock. However, Travis shows us that crazy sources of knowledge do not affect everyone in the same way. Some people use this knowledge to hurt others, while others use this power to help. Travis uses the knowledge of the rock to find a way for Tobin to leave the grass, even though he is told that if he touches the rock he can never leave. Tobin emerges in the chapel across the street from the grass and finds Cal and Becky at the beginning of the time loop, about to enter the grass. He is able to stop them from entering, and they all drive away.
While Becky, Cal, and Tobin manage to find their way out, many others are not so lucky. In addition to Travis, who is left behind in the grass, there are thousands of barely alive bodies in a large hole under the rock, representing all the people who succumbed to the power of the rock and therefore the grass.
The movie ends happily with Becky and Cal driving off into the distance and Tobin never having entered the grass. The film reinforces the concept of choosing wisely, a concept we have all heard many times, but also brings an element of hope to viewers. Poor choices do not always lead you to doom because you can start making better ones. Each mistake teaches us something. In the film, each mistake shows the characters who to trust and what to do next. In the end, however, we learn that it is much easier to make the right choice the first time rather than fix your mistakes. •
