The Tall Man

The Tall Man movie looks like your standard horror creepy film. We got a clear bad guy, the movie is named after him, and he is intimidating looking.

Right? After all, here is the IMDB description.

When her child goes missing, a mother looks to unravel the legend of the Tall Man, an entity who allegedly abducts children.

Alright, yeah, some Tall Man thing steals kids. Creepy.

But it turns out this movie is misleading as fuck. So my plot summary is going to have “spoilers” in it. Know that in advance.

Hey, don’t go running away. Spoilers aren’t the end of the world.

Basically we have a small town that used to be big, but the mine closed, and everything died. People be poor, yo. Also, kids go missing a lot, and never found. Rumors of some Tall Man that takes them away in the night.

Julia (Jessica Biel) is a nurse who lost her husband, the towns doctor, a few years prior. So she lives in a big house with her nurse and her little boy. WHOM GETS TAKEN BY A TALL MAN AND TIES UP THE NURSE.

Thankfully Julia chases him down, she ain’t no weak woman yo, crashes the truck, and tries to save her boy, but still fails.

Here is where the spoilers really begin.

The Tall Man is a woman in disguise, who is stealing her son back, because she claims that son is hers, and he was stolen years earlier. What? Biel is the Tall Man? Only kind of. Maybe there is an organization of people who steal kids from poor homes. Because kids from poor homes grow up to be poor themselves most of the time, and live shitty lives. Just a positive feedback cycle of being poor and lame. So they take the kids and bring them to rich homes for people to raise them better and help the world.

Yes, that is what the movie is really about. Like a third of the way into it you find out that the kid isn’t actually hers. Also there is a girl named Jenny (Jodelle Ferland) in it too. She is kind of important.

Well, at least someone is finally thinking of the children.

Long story short, The Tall Man is a social commentary with a bit of Mystery/Thriller, yet advertised as a horror. None of those genres which are normally known for their big stances on certain social issues.

Poor people stay poor, and rich people can succeed. I guess that is true. It is like a question on a dating site that I used. “Should people with low IQs be allowed to breed?” A lot of people feel pompous and say no, and fuck that. I think they should be able to do whatever the hell they want, especially if it is one of the most basic urges out there.

This movie doesn’t say that poor people shouldn’t be able to keep kids if they can’t get out of their poor situation. No, it lives it up in the air for the viewer to discuss afterwards, or something. But since that is what the movie is about? Even with the final words questioning if it is all worth it, I really think it is implying they are doing the right thing.

That is all sorts of fucked up.

For other aspects, the movie uses surprisingly good cameras to film it all, so it looks pretty good on Blu-Ray. In other news, I really hate the movie calls what happens in it a twist. It is only a twist because of how it was advertised, aka incorrectly. That is just misleading, and that pisses me off. It is like they are ashamed of their own movie.