Audiobook Evaluation: "In the Tall Grass" (2012) by Stephen King and Joe Hill

This is the absolute first full audiobook I have ever listened to. Of course it had to be Stephen King related, and of course it had to be this. Let me set the scene as I listened to this in my car because it might tell you a lot about my mindset as I listened to this story.

It was late at night, so late that it was probably early. I tend to drive long distances at times, and this was one of those three hour drives I sometimes need to take some nights because life. I was driving from New Jersey to Connecticut (where I live), going through the Saw Mill (River) Parkway in New York. It was so late at the time that there was nobody else on the road. Again, I see this quite often when I drive home that late. So, as I listened to this story about a car pulling off the road on a long-distance trip to check out what's going on in a field of grass, I was also driving and very much ready to be creeped out myself.

So, the mood is set. Now, let's get to the bare minimum about this story without spoiling anything. I really don't want to spoil anything. The story here is way too good to spoil, and I don't really think many people know a ton about this audiobook. While Stephen King and his son wrote this together, I wouldn't exactly call it well known, especially because one of the major forms of this novella is the audiobook format of it. While it also can be found as an e-book and was written in a magazine as well, it has yet to be inserted into one of King's story collections and thus is still relatively unknown despite being incredibly good.

The story follows a simple premise. As I mentioned briefly, a brother and sister are taking a long drive to San Diego, basically taking an extended vacation so that the sister, Becky, will have some time to decide whether or not she wants to abort her child or keep it. She's very young, nineteen, in college, and has become pregnant by an unknown father. Cal, her brother, is supporting her on this trip. They are very close these two, and the big reason might be because they are very similar in the way they think and act. Anyway, on the way they pull off the highway because both of them hear something coming from inside the grassy field. The thing they hear is a young boy crying out for help.

The story continues with Becky and Cal going to try to help the kid, who they think has simply wandered into the field while playing and become lost. The problem is exacerbated though when a woman's voice, the mother of the child, calls out to them to not enter the grass, to stay away. Becky and Cal become intrigued, enter the grass, and seal their eventual fate.

This story is about nature versus humanity, and maybe something beyond nature as well. I would call this a story about an eldritch abomination, one very much unlike a Cthulhu or a Lovecraftian horror, but one also very similar as well. Without giving too much away, the grass, the tall grass of the title, is very similar to the room in the story 1408. While there is much less psychological horror in this story than in that one, the premise is very similar, and the effects of both are quite chilling. While room 1408 seems to be fairly self-contained, more a nuisance than something that people are maliciously going to wander in to, the tall grass, and what lies within it, is very much in the open, unguarded, and finds its own way to attract others into its clutches.

This story is terrifying by the way. Listening to it in the day or at night doesn't really change that. The story still holds a creepy factor that does not go away, not even in the brightest daylight. It is a story about being lost, about being unable to ever find yourself again. It is about being pulled over the edge, being pulled over to the dark side of your own nature, against your will, or maybe as the only way to stay alive. The story has some horrifying set-pieces, although none of them occur within the first half or so of the story. During the second half though, the punches of horror keep flying. Topics such as abortion, miscarriage, cannibalism, insanity, rape, and eldritch horror are spoken about at length, each topic dealt with in a terrifying (and sometimes absolutely sickening) way.

There were moments as I listened to this audiobook, that I covered my mouth in horror and surprise. And on my first listening to this, especially once the second half of the story started playing, I actually needed to shut the CD player in my car off for a while so that I could collect myself. The story had literally upset me so much that I couldn't listen anymore without feeling genuinely sick to my stomach. I can't think of many horror stories that can do that to me, but this one is quality terror.

I don't really want to say much about the second half. There is a stone in a field, and things mentioned very early in the story become very important later on. It's reminiscent of "Children of the Corn" in a way, but that probably has more to do with the setting and slight religious overtones (of one sort or another) more than anything else. Actually the dealing with religion is very much a Stephen King staple going all the way back to Carrie. It seems that those motivated by a religion of fear tend to be the most loathsome sort to King, something I find very interesting.

I know that audiobooks aren't for everybody, but for the amount that I drive, they are basically perfect. And this is a damn good audiobook besides. The audiobook is read by Steven Lang, an actor I know specifically as Mr. Travitt from The I Inside, a character that I really loved, and he does a great job here, impersonating the voices and really doing a topnotch job as both narrator and storyteller. His acting really sells the story, especially when he really seems to get into it in the second half of the story. His voice is downright chilling at times as the story moves on, and that's about as good a compliment as I can give him.

Stephen King and his son, Joe Hill, did a great job with this story. To me it has gone down as one of the classic short horror stories from Stephen King, up there with The Mist and N. in terms of quality and terrifying storytelling. I wholeheartedly recommend this audiobook to everybody. Check it out if you can. I wasn't disappointed. Actually, listening to the audiobook a second time really made me want to read, watch, or listen to more Stephen king stories...

So, that might be a thing.

Soon.

Movie Appraisal: The I Inside (2003)

The I Inside is a psychological thriller. It really is. I know I've been a little careful about naming genres, but this movie is in no way a horror film, but a thriller film? Yeah. That pretty much hits it on the button. It's a good film too, full of something most movies today don't seem to have. But I'll get to that. I'll get to everything.

The movie starts off with a man waking up in a hospital. That's always a bad sign in movies, especially movies like this. It makes them easy to predict. Hospitals seem to be the place to go for these types of movies. I guess it makes sense, but still... these kinds of psychological films are so easy to predict. The story moves on from there as the main character Simon (played by Ryan Phillippe) goes forwards and backwards through time seemingly trying to figure out his own mystery.

The acting here is phenomenal. It's incredibly good, but also feels very strange. Everything feels off. The way the characters act feels strange. They don't exactly seem like real people through the way they're acting alone. But it makes it a fun ride, seeing how they act, and how it is so different from what a person in a normal movie might do.

The character of Anna (Piper Perabo) is one I think I should linger on for a few lines. Her character is incredibly mysterious and really kind of creepy. The way she acts is both off-putting and far away from what her character looks like. There is a disconnect there and it is fantastic to watch. It's understandable once the end of the film comes around, but it is fascinating to watch throughout.

Not to give any spoilers away, but this movie reminds me a lot of Stay and Sublime, both of which I reviewed in October. It reminds me of Stay because some of the plot elements almost seem copy-pasted between the two movies. It reminds me of Sublime because of the hospital setting. The I Inside is nowhere near as horrific as Sublime, but with both being in hospitals, it's hard not to see some similarities.

The film's plot is a gorgeous and anachronistic flow. It always feels subtly off, but it tells the story it's meant to tell. Everything works together and flows beautifully. Some of the things I'd like to compliment most are the gorgeous cuts through time. It's done so well and so nicely that I really did enjoy those parts.

The movie itself wasn't amazingly engrossing. Simon is a hard character to like simply because of the way he looks, like some reject from a pretty boy reality show. The main female character of Claire (Sarah Polley) is also hard to like for the same reason. The film feels like a soap opera in parts, especially when those characters share time on screen together, but it makes sense that it would, and despite the fact that both of those characters are fairly unlikable, I found both their stories fascinating nonetheless.

Then I noticed Stephen Rea. I like this guy. I think he's pretty awesome. He was in The Reaping though, so that takes down his credibility some. Even though he was in that awful film though, I still like him. He does a good job here. I enjoyed his performance, even if he did seem like he was phoning it in at points.

The filmography of this movie is all over the place. I liked the time transitions and some of the "gorier" shots (even though there really is no gore in this film) come off quite well. But when characters are simply speaking or nothing is really going on at all, the shooting style is strange and off-putting. It really took me away from the film.

The I Inside is the kind of movie I like in theory, but not usually in practice. I did happen to like this film. It's not the best film out there, but the acting is solid. The story is one I liked even if it is way overdone. I didn't love the ending because it made the whole film pointless. The ending was a bit like the ending to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, except that there was no payoff, no real reason to watch the film at all. You can watch the first ten minutes of the film, shut it off, and would have never missed anything. It's annoying when a film does that. So, yeah, this film lost some points in the clichéd ending.

Oh, one thing I don't think I've ever mentioned in a movie before, and it needs to be mentioned in this one, is the writing. The writing was singlehandedly the best feature of this film. Whomever wrote this film did a phenomenal job. The words flowed from the characters and felt real regardless of how the actors took it. Half of why I complimented the acting so much is because the writing was just so good. Two characters that seemed particularly well-written were Travis, the orderly, and Mr. Travitt (Stephen Lang), the heart transplant patient. Those two characters were funny and witty and simply awesome. I would watch a film about their adventures together, doing stuff and kicking crime in the face or something. It would be so awesome. Then Travitts has a heart attack and Travis swoops in with snarky comments easily saving his life. Yeah... oh... um... I'm supposed to be reviewing this movie, not writing fan-fiction for it...

Anyway, this is a good film, not as good as Stay for instance, but not as bad as Sublime either. It's somewhere in the middle, and it was a nice film to watch, even if it wasn't perfect.