So here we have The Tall Man from Director Pascal Laugier of the Ultra violent French Shocker 2008's MARTYR'S, Now this is billed as horror but to me it really was more like a murder/mystery movie, not saying that some mysterious figure or supposed entity abducting children isn't horrific it just felt to me like on the back of Martyr's it was pushed for me anyway a little to much with a horror tag.
The film opens up with a women sat in a hospital have Glass shards removed from her badly cut and bruised face, with then to 36 hours earlier where out tail begins, it turns out that the women is the town nurse taking over from her husband who is no longer around and who was a real community man, it seems that all the folks in this dying town don't really seem to like her and basically keep telling her that there is no way she could ever follow in her husbands footsteps, along the way we meet the town sheriff(The smoking man from the X-Files) who is your typical bumbling keep his head down kind of guy an also the town detective played by the great and very underrated Stephin Mchattie, we see the both of them coming out of a disused underground mine which leads us on to the main plot of the story about the disappearance of loads of the towns children allegedly taken by the mysterious Tall Man.
The films flows at a real good pace which leads us to the lady returning home only to discover the young girl she lives with tied up and beaten whilst her young step son is being whisked off by the apparent Tall Man, she gives great chase and manages to catch up with the van and jumps on the back only to the annoyance of the Tall Man who then stops the van to see where she is and dispose of her in his own wicked way, I won't ruin what happens in this scene but it is great, after this we see her laying in the road in the middle of the night all bruised and battered when Mchattie drives up and See's her laying in the road and then takes her in the car to safety.
Now this is where the film has a great "i didn't see that coming" Twist, which again without trying to sound samey i won't spoil, The film then goes through a load more twists and turns until the finale.
My final thoughts were i was really let down by the film but i do feel in the second part of the film it dropped of somewhat with some long dragged out scenes which really weren't necessary in my opinion, the cinematograpghy and atmosphere of the film was great, it had some brilliant shots and great acting from all involved, some likable characters and some you may hate, but for me the twist in the middle was the most satisfying and the end twist was just a bit lame and you really didn't have to be Columbo to work it out.
So in summing up, don't expect anything near the level of Martyrs which in retrospect is good that he has decided not to go with another torture movie with balls out gore and i won't say it's one of the best films i have ever seen but it certainly isn't one of the worse, a good Sunday afternoon movie for the winter, worth a look.
6/10.
Jonny T.
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