Stepping Into The Grass: A Story That Twists Back on Itself
In the Tall Grass, an adaptation of Stephen King and Joe Hill’s novella, starts off seemingly just as any other horror film does: A brother and sister, Becky and Cal, hear a cry for help coming from a vast field of grass. The siblings step into the prairie, and the world stops.
They must navigate a grass maze that shifts space and time. Voices travel from one point to another, and the illusions of depth and breadth boggle the mind. The pair quickly notice estão vocês not the only ones here. It’s travis, the estranged boyfriend of Becky, desperately looking for them. Also, there is Ross Humboldt, a devout follower to a black obsidian rock that towers among the field, admiration of his friendly character quickly turns hostile. Time is bent, borrowed. The same roles play on a loop. Death… is not an end.
While the film looks and plays out like a supernatural puzzle-survival film, the actual twist, as to which the audience was not clued into until the film’s credits had slowly been replaced with black, was just beginning: the survivors of the film began surviving the film. The crew and cast dealt with questions that had not been considered during filming, and the audience created theories on the ending and proposed alternate conclusions to the story.
The time-bending movie serves its purpose, opening up multiple endpoints to pursue. People die only to come back in the timeline, their foot steps echoing from the future. Voices listen to the characters from different hoops of time as the glass becomes a puppet master, leading the characters to the most important back the boulder, a large object that many theorists saw as the movie’s biggest mystery.
The field was seen as purgatory by some theorists, as a cosmic consciousness that feeds on despair by others. One of the most popular theorists on Reddit argued that the boulder was an evil cosmic consciousness, anchored in one timeline, also preserving others in her rock. Vincenzo Natali, the movie’s director, was amazed by how people found a philosophy in his movie“. This portion of the movie was a large controversy as Natali admitted to the boulder having a great deal of philosophical speculation surrounding its absence.
Audiences were fascinated by the cyclical story structure. Many made comparisons to Triangle, Predestination, and The Cabin in the Woods, which are movies that keep the audience theorizing even after the credits finish rolling. Others suggested the grass served as a metaphor for the addiction that traps people who step inside and tricks them into believing that the only way to escape is to give in.
Dreaming up Unused Endings
Since the film differs from the source novella in tone and closure, fans quickly began creating their own endings.
A widespread speculation was that Travis weren’t just supposed to escape the field in the first place. Instead of preventing Becky and Cal from entering and breaking the cycle, some fans hoped the movie would reveal another timeline in which all of the characters remained trapped and the audience would witness the outcome of both timelines at the same time, thus reinforcing the idea that no one version of reality could erase the others. Natali would later address the idea, stating that he had thought of \”more cosmic\” endings, but he wanted to give the audience \”a point of emotional release\” and thus chose the ending he did.
Another alternate take was that the field should have extended outside of its boundaries, consuming the church, the highway, and perhaps even the towns nearby. This version was one that envisioned the grass slowly colonizing the world and the ecosystem of the field rendering human time irrelevant. Ross actor Patrick Wilson, in one panel, joked that this ending would have allowed him \”to run around preaching rock religion for two more movies,\” to which fans created memes and art of and that became a popular comment.
Another, more unique, alternate ending which was suggested by loyal readers where it gets a little darker, is having the final scene focus on the child, Tobin, who repeats the descent into madness just like Ross did, hinting that trauma, rather than the supernatural cycles, is the real curse. It was not utilized, but the idea really struck a cord with a segment of the audience who suggested that the psychology of the story was more terrifying than the supernatural aspects.
The Speculation Before Release: King Fans Being Sherlock Holmes
Even before the movie made it’s debut on Netflix, Stephen King readers had created a whole universe of predictions. The majority speculated that the film was going to integrate into King’s more expansive multiverse, especially since the black rock was reminiscent of the mythical buildings described in The Dark Tower series. While the movie does not confirm this connection, die-hard fans did notice the rock had runic carvings which are sigils found in some of King’s works.
Natali was not shocked by this. During early press interviews, he said that working on a King adaptation is “Opening a doorway to theories before anyone even sees the trailer.” He described that he had fashioned some of the interiors, like the church parking lot and those overhead swirling shots of the grass, to mirror some of the classic King settings without grounding the story in a specific universe.
The possibility of the grassfield being a ‘thin spot’ between worlds, yet another of King’s ideas, spread. Even when Natali explained that the film wasn’t supposed to formally integrate the multiverse, fans speculated, pointing to the author’s history of crossovers, subtle or otherwise.
The Lesser Known Stories Stashed Away Under the Tall Blades
The movie covers a time loop, but the production had its own timeline glue. A less known detail is that the grass wasn’t always real, or at least not all of it. Large sections had been grown for production in rural Ontario, but because of the wind patterns, they were flattened days before shooting. The crew had to repair entire acres of grass, and delays caused by this handiwork ironically resembled the delays in the disorienting timeline of the film.
Patrick Wilson’s transformation into the unhinged Ross drew a few folk legends around the campfire on the set. This one time Wilson gave a goldsmith’s husband sermon-style rant, circling the rock and improvising the whole time while remaining in character. After Cut, the crew remained in a stunned and cut atmosphere for several minutes because they were too disturbed to break the silence. Natali said this was the moment where he realized Wilson was tapping into a form of madness that was human and cosmic.
Another curious detail is that the moving set of grass was filmed with custom drones built for the purpose of the scene and programmed to fly in slow, precise arcs. Natali called these shots the grass spiritual language of the film because they gave the grass the illusion of a living entity.
The Mystery Becomes The Film’s Only Legacy
The film was designed with the intention of creating an audience that enjoys filling the blanks with their imagination. It doesn’t provide answers to many questions, opts for loose rules, unstable timelines, and a silent rock. This provides a form of secondary authorship where filmmakers and audiences share control of the narrative. The film is a place to wander deeper, lose your footing and create your narrative. The movie’s name is a perfect reflection of this theme.