Here is the Netflix description of this film:
“The faded mining town of Cold Rock is haunted by a lethal specter known as the Tall Man, thought to be behind the disappearance of numerous children. When Julia Denning's son David also vanishes, she sets out to unlock the chilling mystery herself.”
And here is why I rarely trust their descriptions.
1. It is quite clear early on in the film that the Tall Man is no specter but some dude who is abducting the town’s children. There is nothing supernatural here whatsoever.
2. Julia Denning does not “set out to unlock a chilling mystery”, she chases down the fucker in the midst of the abduction and fights with him (this scene is the single reason it is getting 2 ½ stars from me by the way).
Now putting this description aside, I have several other complaints about this film in general. First of all, if everyone in town acknowledges that there is a problem hanging on to your children here then wouldn’t any decent parent pack up their double wide and truck on down to a new white trash trailer park in the next town over? Secondly, after the attempted abduction of David a certain weirdness is revealed regarding Julia Denning and it takes far too long to make any headway on explaining it. Tony lost interest and went to play on his computer until it was over. I get where they were going and the underlying message that was conveyed I just didn’t find it as profound as I feel it was meant to be. Once they eventually get to the big plot reveal, to me it was a total let down, like watching an M. Night Shyamalan flick, “What a tweest!” It’s my own fault really, I saw tall man and specter and imagined the ghost of Angus Scrimm grabbing up kids and terrorizing the town. Now THAT would make a cool movie!
7 comments:
Great review! I would hate this movie for your cited reasons. That's two poor reviews for this flick, I'm skipping it. I too only think of Phantasm when I see the title of this.
sounds thoroughly missable.
Ditto, AC!
I agree with pretty much everything you wrote here as well, and yet I still gave the review 4 stars. It sounds to me like one of the biggest disappointments for you was that this really wasn't a horror film. And I agree, it really wasn't The first 30 minutes of this movie needed to be written as a straight-up thriller without the initial tease of "who's the ghost stealing the children". And while you're right in that it did take close to the last hour for the BIG reveal, there were little reveals along the way that were enough to keep me entertained. I kind of saw it as a 60 minute thriller/mystery with a 30-minute opener that tried to be a horror movie. I'm still impressed with the overall message/debate that the film tries to open up.
Interesting. I feel like I have a good grasp on this one based on yours and Trevor's reviews but ah'ma need to see this one and judge for myself.
Do it JSP, it needs a closer look.
Ditto what JSP said, although my dance card is pretty full for this month. I'm intrigued about what kind of social commentary could be going on here.
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