The Tall Man (2012)

The Tall Man is a film that is half of a baffling story and half of a quite interesting one. The film is set in a town called Cold Rock where children have been going missing and it’s due to someone called the Tall Man who is a black clad individual. Jessica Biel plays a nurse called Julia Denning who’s husband died many years earlier but for the first half of the story it seems a bit weird. After a while of nothing happening the drama happens when her son is taken and she runs after the black clad person drives off there is a nice little sequence where Biel has to tackle the mystery person whilst having her leg bitten by a dog before it turns over.

It was quite obvious that a classic plot device was going to be used and that is the town folk would be involved in the disappearance and it soon proved to be a correct guess when Denning finds a photo of her son who has just been taken.  There was an awful lot of not knowing exactly was going on and there were various theroies going on but then its becomes obvious that Biel isn’t the good as gold nurse that we are led to believe but actually someone who we are led to believe is the person who has killed all these children but then there is yet again another twist when we find out that these children aren’t dead but have infact been given to a family that will treat them far better that they were being treated back in Cold Rock. I must admit this was a rather clever thing which I didn’t see coming but my main issue is that it took way too long for the interesting stuff to come to the screen. At 100 minutes you would think that there wouldn’t be much time to waste with the minor stuff but unfortunately I spent far too long confused which is shame because the last 15-20 minutes is quite interesting and there is an interesting story in there but its too rushed for my liking.

Jessica Biel was quite good in this. Having just seen her in Total Recall I thought this was a much better performance as she played two sides of the character with the true Julia being the more interesting part. William B Davis was great because I remember him from the X-Files and thought that as the local policeman he didn’t really convince me but I still thought that he was great.

I was expecting The Tall Man who be a horror which would have some scares but it was a totally different film to that. It has its faults but I think that I have seen far worse films with substantially worse acting. Jessica Biel is the big name in this film but at times its so underplayed that you feel it could have been played by anyone and its curious to know what the reported £11.2 million budget was spent on because it could have been spent on a script writer who could have worked on tightening it up.

Rating - 6/10