Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.49 AVERAGE
3.49 AVERAGE
I was transfixed by this story's opening, which reminded me quite a bit of the first few scenes from the 2001 film Jeepers Creepers, which I'm quite fond of. A brother and sister on a cross-country road trip, on an isolated stretch of highway far from civilization, who encounter a mysterious evil outside a seemingly abandoned old church. But the similarities end there.
This story, a collaboration between King and his son Joe Hill, does an excellent job of capturing your attention and slowly ratcheting up the tension.
Like a good bit of of King's work, though, this is a great concept which unfortunately concludes with a terribly unsatisfying ending. What little explanation there is for the mystery is so uncompelling it leaves you wishing they hadn't bothered with it at all. But worse than that is that the ending resorts to senseless shock-value gore that feels more at home in an Eli Roth film than it does in a Stephen King story.
This story, a collaboration between King and his son Joe Hill, does an excellent job of capturing your attention and slowly ratcheting up the tension.
Like a good bit of of King's work, though, this is a great concept which unfortunately concludes with a terribly unsatisfying ending. What little explanation there is for the mystery is so uncompelling it leaves you wishing they hadn't bothered with it at all. But worse than that is that the ending resorts to senseless shock-value gore that feels more at home in an Eli Roth film than it does in a Stephen King story.
Ok this father son duo whipped up an amazing short horror story and it was very creepy and gross and I’m glad I read it.
This short story/novella shows some touches of Stephen King's coauthor, Joe Hill (his son, in fact)-- there is a little bit more of a sophisticated postmodernist abstract touch to the dream sequences, and they are couched in less crude language. I feel like King would have bracketed every stumble and gasp with a few red-blooded American "Fuck!!"s, if not "Shit fire and save matches!"s, but they are thin on the ground here.
I give this one five stars for being a nice, squishy, classic (New Classic?) King horror novella:
- Road trip into creepy Americana tourist destination
- Creepy Americana is off the beaten path, just a little outside the Known and into the Unknown
- Outsiders on a road trip
- A little bit of foreshadowing, and a light brush of Creepy Deepwoods Christian
- Nature as an entity/consciousness, and that entity wants BLOOD
- Unknown nature of threat, heavily implied to be extraterrestrial
- Good old fashioned mooshy gooshy maggoty chewy crispety crunchety gore (both fighting and dead bodies to look at)
- The Encroaching Madness
- The threat is never ended, is eternal, and the cycle continues
Yep, that's a King, stamp it Finished.
Perhaps the presence of his son kept it tightly edited and rolling along at a brisk clip, and also brought it back to that crispety crunchety peanut buttery gore train instead of the "Why don't we take a step back and think about how great it is to be a grandfather and how children are our future" slog that SK has been putting us through for the last 15 years as he ages. It's slowed down his plots from the cocaine-fueled screaming motorcycle ride of "Misery" to a sleepy golf-cart-pulled- zoo-train-for-babies crawl with "Elevation".
Thank you, Joe "Hill" King, for your service, and try not to get the 'Roni.
I give this one five stars for being a nice, squishy, classic (New Classic?) King horror novella:
- Road trip into creepy Americana tourist destination
- Creepy Americana is off the beaten path, just a little outside the Known and into the Unknown
- Outsiders on a road trip
- A little bit of foreshadowing, and a light brush of Creepy Deepwoods Christian
- Nature as an entity/consciousness, and that entity wants BLOOD
- Unknown nature of threat, heavily implied to be extraterrestrial
- Good old fashioned mooshy gooshy maggoty chewy crispety crunchety gore (both fighting and dead bodies to look at)
- The Encroaching Madness
- The threat is never ended, is eternal, and the cycle continues
Yep, that's a King, stamp it Finished.
Perhaps the presence of his son kept it tightly edited and rolling along at a brisk clip, and also brought it back to that crispety crunchety peanut buttery gore train instead of the "Why don't we take a step back and think about how great it is to be a grandfather and how children are our future" slog that SK has been putting us through for the last 15 years as he ages. It's slowed down his plots from the cocaine-fueled screaming motorcycle ride of "Misery" to a sleepy golf-cart-pulled- zoo-train-for-babies crawl with "Elevation".
Thank you, Joe "Hill" King, for your service, and try not to get the 'Roni.
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Brother and sister, Cal and Becky, are extremely close. During a cross country drive they stop when they hear a young boy calling for help from the tall grass by the roadside and both go in to look for him. Before they know it they are separated from each other and seem to be further from the road than should be possible. What is really going on in the tall grass?
I really like occasionally being able to read a whole story in one day, gives me a real sense of accomplishment. In the case of “In The Tall Grass” though it wasn’t much of a challenge as it is only 61 pages long.
This has been on my Kindle for a while so it felt good to get to one from near the top of my TBR list! I did enjoy this, it has most of the hallmarks of a good King/Hill horror story but I did think the shortness let it down. I didn’t feel I had enough time to really get to know Becky and Cal before they were in peril and, to be honest, what I did know of them they sounded annoying!
There is creepiness galore along with the supernatural element we have come to know and love from a lot of King’s books. There is also quite a lot of gore! The section towards the end was particular disturbing!
There really isn’t a massive amount I can say about such a short story, especially whilst avoiding spoilers. It was a nice quick way of passing the time today. I read just under half while I had my soak in the bath and then I finished it just before bed so it was fine. It’s very fast paced, as you would expect from a short story, pretty much straight into arriving at the tall grass, and there isn’t much let up in the action.
On the whole, the story is well written and the descriptive content was excellent. I do love character pieces and this is lacking on that score but you can’t expect much in the way of character development in such a short story. I’d be interested to see how Netflix have developed it for a film to be honest as I would imagine they’ve had to do a lot of fleshing out to make anything feature length.
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I still think about this book today. After it was over I couldn't think clearly. I was so shocked and confused by it all. This was my first Stephan King book, so forgive me if I'm being dramatic, but I really loved it. I really liked the character's and I was sufficiently unsettled.