The Tall Man Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

The Tall Man Blu-ray Movie Review

Not the One from PHANTASM

Reviewed by Michael Reuben September 23, 2012

"It was like an ancient legend. Something from a book of fairy tales."

The title character of writer-director Pascal Laugier's The Tall Man shouldn't be confused with the spectral undertaker who haunts the Phantasm franchise created by Don Coscarelli. Coscarelli's 1979 horror classic was an inventive B movie shocker with nothing else on its mind other than giving the viewer nightmares. Laugier has other goals. He wants to use horror and suspense tropes to raise social and moral questions that aren't so easily answered, and his style recalls that of Chris Carter when he was at the top of his game in the 1990s. Indeed, the disappearance of children from a remote mining town that is The Tall Man's central mystery could have been one of investigator Frank Black's cases on Carter's TV show Millennium. Black would certainly have been better equipped to understand the situation than the stolid FBI agent played in the film by veteran Canadian actor Stephen McHattie.

Laugier's defiance of genre conventions has outraged many viewers, some of them professional critics, who start off thinking they're watching a horror film and gradually find themselves watching something else. Exactly what they're watching is impossible to say without major spoilers, although I personally found the film's conclusion plenty horrifying, just not in the usual way. There is a long tradition of horror drawing inspiration and energy from the fear engendered by daily life, whether it's Mary Shelley creating Frankenstein out of the terrors of childbirth and motherhood, or Joss Whedon re-inventing the vampire legend via the anxieties of high school and first love, or the array of movie monsters created by atomic mutation during the Cold War. Laugier's success in tapping into such real-life sources of dread can be seen in the haste with which some viewers have rushed to slap a label onto The Tall Man (usually something like "Lifetime Movie"), so that they can put it away and not have to think about it.

Something similar happened with a high-profile detective film a few years ago that explored much of the same territory as The Tall Man and raised equally uncomfortable issues. People denounced the ending as ridiculous and the film as unrealistic, because that was easier than grappling with the tough questions the film asked of its viewers. I can't name the detective film without giving away too much about The Tall Man (PM me if you really want to know), but the issue is the same: Do you want a tidy genre conclusion, or do you want something unexpected that asks important questions about the world in which we live?

The film's occasional narrator is Jenny (Tideland's remarkable Jodelle Ferland), the younger of two daughters of a single mom, Tracy (Samantha Ferris). With other people, Jenny cannot speak, although she is receiving therapy to overcome this limitation, which is almost certainly psychological in origin. Jenny writes messages when she needs to communicate, and she draws constantly. She is the film's observer, and she observes more than anyone realizes.

The town of Cold Rock, Washington, where Jenny lives with her mother, older sister, Carol (Katherine Ramdeen), and her mother's boyfriend, Steven (Teach Grant), has been dying ever since the coal mine beneath it shut down. Impoverished now, the town's residents scrape by on public assistance and odd jobs. Many have left.

As the film opens, Agent Dodd (McHattie) of the FBI and Sheriff Chestnut (William B. Davis), the local law, are exiting the mine, which Dodd wants sealed off from the public. Back in town, Julia Denning (Jessica Biel), a nurse and the widow of the town's former doctor, is being treated for serious facial injuries, including chunks of broken glass embedded in her face and forehead. Agent Dodd walks into the room, and they exchange looks. Flashback to thirty-six hours earlier . . .

Tracy brings her daughters to Julia, because Carol, the elder, is in labor. Tracy's live-in boyfriend, Steve, is the father, but Tracy claims she didn't know Carol was pregnant. Tracy says she'll "deal with" Steve, but when Julia goes to check on Carol the next day, the girl has been packed off to her aunt, and Steve is still there, proudly claiming paternity. Julia then looks for Jenny, who is keeping her distance and sitting outside near a river, drawing.

The town lives under a cloud, because young children have been disappearing for months, and posters with their pictures are plastered everywhere. Local lore says that the culprit is a hooded figure called "the Tall Man", but skeptics dismiss this as legend. Jenny tells Julia (in writing) that she's seen the Tall Man and shows Julia a drawing. That evening, Julia herself confronts a hooded figure in her own home, which she shares with her son, David (Jakob Davies), and a live-in companion, Christine (Eve Harlow). Julia chases the mysterious figure as it runs off carrying David, and it's during the course of this long, arduous chase that the narrative ground begins to shift. By the time Julia and David are reunited (and that is not a spoiler), you no longer know who or what to believe.

The protection of children is a value often invoked by people with agendas, some of which have little to do with the welfare of actual children. The Tall Man dares to raise questions about who really protects kids, who should protect them and what happens when the officially designated guardians of the young and helpless fail at their task. Many of those questions can be read in the haunted eyes of Jodelle Ferland's Jenny, who's seen far too much for a girl of her tender years. No wonder she keeps silent. At a certain point, words fail.

The Tall Man Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

It appears from the credits that The Tall Man was shot with the Red digital system. (The official resumé of the Polish-Canadian cinematographer, Kamal Derkaoui, states that he works in "35mm, HD & Digital Cinema", but it doesn't break down individual projects by format.) In any case, post-production was completed on a digital intermediate, from which Image's 1080p, VC-1-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced via direct digital transfer. The result is sharp, free of noise and so detailed that, even in low-light conditions, the rundown condition of both Cold Rock and its people is always readily apparent. Night scenes in the forest show excellent shadow detail, as does a lengthy sequence from the latter half of the film set in a derelict facility with rubble strewn everywhere.

Blacks are solid, colors are muted and the palette tends toward the cool end of the spectrum, as befits the name of the town, except for a few places where warmth still prevails, like Julia's home. Even Jessica Biel, who took an executive producer credit, forgoes any star lighting or glamorous makeup; she blends in with the rest of the townspeople, their vitality visibly sapped by the town's economic depression and the loss of so many children.

Video noise is absent, and compression artifacts are non-existent.

The Tall Man Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's DTS-HD MA 5.1 track provides an active surround environment from the moment the sheriff and the FBI agent exit the mine at the beginning of the film and the sounds of wind and canyon echoes fill the surrounds. Appropriate environmental noises are always present, often aggressively so, e.g., during a home invasion and at various points during Julia's pursuit of the mysterious figure she encounters in her house. Basements, tunnels and long corridors all provide opportunities for echoes, footsteps and other unsettling noises. The dialogue is always clear, and the atmospheric score by Todd Bryanton has been nicely layered into the mix.

The Tall Man Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scene (HD, 1080p; 2.40:1; 3:58): This scene would have extended Julia's pursuit of the mysterious figure who took David. It was probably cut for pacing.



• Visual Concepts (HD, 1080p; 2.40:1): Eleven highly detailed paintings. (Note: These displayed normally on a PS3, but would not display on a Panasonic BDP-50, which suggests a possible hardware incompatibility in the mastering.)



• Theatrical Trailer (HD, 1080p; 2.40:1; 1:56): Extremely well cut together to convey a sense of the film without giving away anything of substance.



• Additional Trailer: At startup the disc plays a trailer (in 1080p) for Lovely Molly. This can be skipped with the top menu (but not the chapter forward) button and is not otherwise available once the disc loads.

The Tall Man Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Why do we watch movies? To have vicarious experiences that we can't undergo in real life, because they're fantastical or impossibly perfect or socially inappropriate or just too dangerous. But danger comes in many forms, and not all of them involve buckets of blood or supernatural forces. I don't mind providing this much of a spoiler: that, if you're looking for thrills of that nature, The Tall Man will disappoint. The dangers it offers are human, all too human, which doesn't make them any less terrifying. As the Talented Mr. Ripley once pointed out, everyone has their reasons— even serial killers and crazed crusaders who inflict unimaginable suffering in the name of what they imagine is a greater good. Highly recommended.