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| Julia (Jessica Biel) is determined to save the children in The Tall Man (Pascal Laugier, 2012) |
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Pascal Laugier, known for the incredibly gory "new French extremity" film
Martyrs (2008), has gone to a slightly quieter, less messy place with
The Tall Man (2012), a film more in line with his earlier supernatural film
House of Voices (2004). In that film, not only was its lead Anna (Virginie Ledoyen) sensitive to ghosts, but also committed to saving the children in what appears to be a nearly abandoned orphanage. Clearly Laugier abides by this perpetual gendered affinity, bordering on a biological urge, that women and children go together like bread and butter--when frankly, in horror films, hanging out or getting attached to kids clearly
only gets women in trouble. This way leads to madness, indeed.
The Tall Man opens with a girl's voice, local resident Jenny (Jodelle Ferland), describing how something "bad," something "evil," has come to the broken down town of Cold Rock, WA. Children seem to be disappearing. The narrative begins with Julia Denning (Jessica Biel), bleeding and battered, having glass removed from her face, as a lawman asks how she is, and informs her that he's still searching for the boy and the other children. Cryptic!! Then an intertitle informs viewers that we've jumped to 36 hours earlier, and we'll find out how all this bloody mayhem has come to pass. The film proceeds to follow Julia, a young widowed nurse trying to keep the working-class townspeople of Cold Rock healthy. She's got her work cut out, as the film reveals in sweeping pans and tracking shots, as well as Jenny's voiceover, the poverty and economic devastation that has hit the area after its coal mines are shut down, and jobs disappear. What's left in Cold Rock is a bunch of struggling people trying to keep afloat as their little ones vanish. These disappearances are attributed to a mysterious "Tall Man" whom people claim to have seen numerous times, yet not clearly enough to either catch him or perceive him as anything other than a mythical "boogeyman."
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| The Law, including genre regular Stephen McHattie and Cigarette Smoking Man (William B. Davis), are ineffectual |
Lieutenant Dodd (Stephen McHattie) and Sheriff Chestnut (William B. Davis) are stumped as to these disappearances, but we largely see events unfold through Julia's eyes, as she is the film's protagonist and point-of-identification. Alas, as in most horror films led by female protagonists, she cannot be necessarily trusted, and not everything is as it appears. While "the town" mourns their missing, they simultaneously are grateful if their child is not snatched. Unsurprisingly, Julia is not immune to these events, and the Tall Man sneaks into her house one night and snatches her son, David, knocking out and tying up the babysitter Christine (Eve Harlow). Like an industrious woman in horror with a missing child, Julia goes after the abductor full throttle, hanging on to the back door of the van while being dragged by a moving vehicle. She survives a vicious dog attack
and disables the vehicle in a tension-filled battle. She even successfully tracks the kidnapper through the woods, only to collapse in pain in the road, soon to be rescued by Lieutenant Dodd. He takes her to the local diner, and asks the townspeople to help her, but they are
all acting really weird, whispering behind her back and giving her suspicious looks. In waitress Trish's back room, she spots a photo of her son centered in some kind of shrine, surrounded by candles. What is going on? Are we looking at some "wicker man" shenanigans, and is the town into ritual child sacrifice? If Julia's lived in town for a while, wouldn't she have figured out what's up earlier? Well, I'll tell you, but you have been duly informed that there are ***spoilers ahead.
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| Julia is captured by the Tall Man, helpless to rescue her son |
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As I mentioned earlier, Julia is extremely resourceful. I would rely on her in a pinch during either a home invasion or a zombie apocalypse. She sneaks into the Sheriff's backseat as he leads her to where her child is hidden, and then she confronts the kidnapper, who is none other than
Mrs. Johnson?? (Connie Wheeler), a woman who is missing her own child as well. In fact, she insists that in this upside down world, Julia has actually kidnapped
her child, and she narrates a montage of past events that renders this plot possibility utterly believable. So, at the film's 2/3 point, spectators are now led to question everything we know about Julia, and re-examine all the events that have occurred thus far. In support of this new perspective, Julia's son, David (Jakob Davies) seems not that interested in leaving with her. So, wait?! Who is David's "real" mother? Well, when we find out, that's when the whole film goes pear shaped, even if it still maintains a good deal of tension.
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| David (Jakob Davies) seems afraid of Julia |
***Spoilers!! As Julia snatches the kid and takes him back to her house, the film makes clear that not only is David not
her kid, but that she and Christine have been giving the town's children to "The Tall Man" for quite a while now. He appears to reside somewhere in the basement, and kids go down there, but they never come back up. Is Julia feeding him?? Here, it's important to explain a side plot where Jenny takes center stage. Jenny is Tracy's daughter, and she and her abusive boyfriend, Steven, continue to make bad choices that direly affect her two children, Carol (whom Steven impregnates) and Jenny, who gets slapped around one too many times. In her case, Jenny begs Julia to contact the Tall Man so that he can intervene. And he eventually does.
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| Jenny's life with her "third mother" does not seem too bad |
More spoilers** At film's end we discover that Julia has sacrificed herself, and taken the rap for The Tall Man, so that he can continue to "save" children from their poverty-stricken and violent circumstances. Turns out that Julia and her
not dead husband have been snatching children from their homes in Cold Rock and providing them with new families that are more fitting (white, wealthy, nurturing). Playing judge and jury for some supposed "secret organization" that resettles kids into better homes, the Tall Man "snatches" Jenny and brings her to a wealthy older woman's abode, where she appears to live a rather cushy life, far away from her abusive former life.
The Tall Man works because spectators only get the full picture in the film's last 10 minutes. Up until that point, our imagination fills in the blanks, and the narrative's twists and turns are not too predictable. I was waiting for the Tall Man's big reveal, imagining all sorts of diabolical half-human creatures crunching on kiddie bones in the basement. I admit to some degree of disappointment when we find out what's actually going on, as it SUCKS to have Julia rotting away in some prison (with a possible death penalty sentence), a martyr to the "save the children" cause. The film is smartly ambiguous enough that its "message" is not such a clear read. Yes, the relocated children appear to have a better life, but why does this white guy get to make this decision? What exactly is the organization for which he works as "child snatcher?" Jenny's voiceover brackets the film, as she too questions whether her new life is "for the best." The film is open enough to let spectators ultimately decide, but really, this film does not do the poor and working-class any favors.
The Tall Man is currently streaming on Netflix, and worth giving a whirl, even as it reinforces some of the worst myths about poverty and the working class (and its narrative is limited largely to white people.)
