The Tall Man Movie Review

Rating: R
Runtime: 106 minutes
Release Date: August 31, 2012
Director: Pascal Laugier

Julia Denning (Jessica Biel, “The A-Team”) is a small town nurse who took over her husband’s practice after his death. Tracy (Samantha Ferris, “Supernatural”) shows up at the clinic with her sick daughter, only to discover her daughter is in labor. Julia later talks to Tracy’s other daughter Jenny (Jodelle Ferland, “Silent Hill”) who no longer speaks. At the end of a long day, she comes home to see her babysitter and son David.

Later that night, Julia wakes to hear noises downstairs. The television blasts a religious program and she finds her babysitter tied up and bleeding in the pantry. As the woman’s eyes grow wide, Julia sees the Tall Man carrying her son out the back door. The Tall Man is part urban legend part real person who locals blame for a rash of missing children in the area. Julia rushes outside, manages to grab the back of the man’s truck, and holds on for dear life. When she finds herself face-to-face with the person who took her child, the movie suddenly goes to another level.

A friend of mine said that “The Tall Man” is like a horror movie for adults. I would agree with that to a point, but I also think that it’s a thinking person’s horror movie. This was completely not what I expected based on the previews. I assumed it would be the typical child kidnapper-dark horror movie. What I got was a movie that kept issuing new twists and turns that would take you to one place and then turns things around and send the plot in a new direction.

There were at least three times in the movie where I was sure that I knew what was going on, only to have something else happen and have things turn again. On a sad note, I made a joke a few minutes into the movie about how it should end and it actually ended that way.

“The Tall Man” is more of a thriller than an actual horror movie, but it still manages to throw a few scares and jump scenes into the mix. The boyfriend loves a good horror film and he picks on me when I jump, but this movie got him twice. I would recommend going into it with a clean slate and no expectations because it’s quite different from what the trailers showed.