In the Tall Grass Ending Completely Explained
in the tall grass explained, in the tall grass ending explained, the ending of in the tall grass explained, in the tall grass review, in the tall grass breakdown, in the tall grass ending, time travel, breakdown, how the grass works, in the tall grass reaction, in the tall grass, netflix original films, netflix original, stephen king movies, stephen king adaptation, stephen king, horror movies, horror, movie review, review, explained, Horror, Film, Movies, watchmojo, watch mojo, top 10, list,
Script written by Michael Wynands
Never before has a field been quite this labyrinthine. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’ll be explaining the ending of “In the Tall Grass”. Come along as we take a deep dive into this dense and often confusing Netflix original film in an attempt to better appreciate both the film’s convoluted plot and themes.
It might go without saying given the title, but this video will contain major spoilers. So if you haven’t seen the movie yet but intend to, go watch it now and then come back to us!
People can’t get enough Stephen King content, and Netflix seems only too happy to provide subscribers with their next terrifying cinematic fix. An adaptation of the 2012 novella co-written by King and his son Joe Hill, “In the Tall Grass” has a simple premise, but it’s one that yields an abundance of narrative twists and unnerving moments.
“In the Tall Grass” opens on siblings Becky and Cal, as they drive to San Diego. Becky is pregnant and when she begins to feel nauseous, they pull over near an old church so she can… get some air [Becky pukes]. Soon after, however, a young boy’s cries for help draw them into a field of tall grass. Before they enter, they hear a woman’s voice telling the boy not to call out. Cal goes crashing in nonetheless, while Becky - who seems far more uneasy about the whole thing - slowly follows behind. Thus… the nightmare begins.
In the dense grass, the siblings quickly lose track of both each other and the road. There’s more to it than run-of-the-mill disorientation however; space seems to work differently in the field. One moment Becky’s voice is coming from Cal’s left, the next moment it sounds as if she’s somewhere else entirely. Frustration turns into panic as they become just as lost as Tobin. mIt isn’t until evening that Becky finds someone - Tobin’s father Ross. He tells her to stay close but she soon loses him in the grass. Meanwhile, an exhausted Cal has an encounter of his own - with a dirty and thoroughly creepy Tobin, carrying a dead crow. The boy confirms Cal’s suspicions: however impossible it might sound, the grass moves people around as it pleases. Tobin then leads him to a giant rock in a clearing, which he claims teaches people to understand the tall grass; just then, however, Becky is attacked.
Cutting to a daytime scene, we learn that the father of Becky’s child, Travis, has followed them into the field. This is when things start to get dark, deadly and more than a little confusing. Led by Tobin, who claims to have met Travis already, the new arrival discovers Becky’s decomposed corpse. Travis is devastated, but that’s replaced by bewilderment when he hears Tobin and his parents OUTSIDE the grass. They’re soon drawn in by Travis’ calls and their runaway dog. Cal and Becky are also seen arriving, and when most of the group comes together, it becomes clear that this isn’t just a non-chronological approach to storytelling on the part of the filmmaker - time is no longer working in a linear fashion. Travis came looking for Cal and Becky after they entered the field, yet was also in the grass before them.
Now, before we move any further, it’s worth acknowledging that this is a film that revels in mystery. There are a lot of moving parts, and even by the time the credits roll, many questions remain unanswered. What we do know however, is that the field defies the laws of time and space. It might be a clearly defined piece of land in the geographic sense, but for the people within its boundaries, nothing is concrete.
Adding to the scare factor is the fact that the way in which this plays out isn’t random; the tall grass seems to have a mind of its own, manipulating time to pull people into its clutches. Cal and Becky are pulled in by Tobin, and Travis is pulled in to find Becky, while Tobin and his family are drawn in by Travis. Past, present and future lose all meaning in and around the tall grass; moments in time are instead pieced together to suit the grass’ needs.
Of course, at the center of all of this, is the giant rock that Tobin showed to Cal. The grass is really just an extension of the rock and its willpower. Essentially, the rock is the brain; the tall grass is its body. Ultimately it seeks to assimilate the people it lures into this body, which occurs when a person touches the rock. The moment this happens, they become part of the grass and forever rooted within it. The field ensnares people like a spider’s web, but once Ross touches the rock, he becomes the spider - an agent of violence to carry out the rock’s dark purpose. When the others refuse to touch the rock, he tries to force them, and when they fight back, he kills them - horrifically, we might add! But time is cyclical in the tall grass and as we’ve already seen, death isn’t a once in a lifetime thing here.
The question is, what does the rock want? Well, it’s hard to say with certainty. The rock is the film’s biggest and most enduring mystery. Like so many other malicious supernatural forces from pop culture, it seems to be driven by an insatiable hunger - seeking to assimilate all who enter the grass. We see the result of this process in the bodies buried around the rock, and in the grass humanoids that take Becky. According to the film’s costume designer Ginger Martini, these grass monsters - which were not in the source material - are “the spirits of the people who didn’t make it out”. There’s another clue in the prophetic carvings on the rock - which seem to anticipate some of the film’s events. The nearby the “Church of the Black Rock of the Redeemer” suggests that perhaps people once worshipped the rock. Could they have also created the carvings? Ultimately, all we can do is speculate.
By looking at the film’s larger themes however, we can come to better understand what the rock and the tall grass represent. All of these characters are trapped, forced to wander and die in cyclical patterns - much as in real life, people make the same bad decisions over and over again, or allow themselves to be defined by their regrets. The grass can be seen as a metaphor for the way we can lose our way in life and end up repeating the same old mistakes. When Ross touches the rock, he frees himself from self-awareness, giving up on his own agency, and achieving a kind of blissful ignorance. While the rest of the group attempts to escape the grass, they remain stuck because they fail to grow as individuals.
Alternatively, the rock and its modus operandi could also be seen as an analogy for fixed, dogmatic ideologies and their followers. Ross is essentially an extreme example of how people attempt to force others to adopt their way of thinking, and are unsatisfied until everyone thinks the same way.
Either way, it’s only through Travis’ act of self-sacrifice that this cycle is finally broken. By choosing to touch the rock, Travis makes a definitive choice. And by choosing to break the cycle, he saves Cal, Tobin, Becky and his unborn child. Clinging to his own identity, even as the grass assimilates him, he’s able to send Tobin to the church, so that Tobin can stop Cal and Becky from entering the field. This action, in turn, allows them to avoid the cycle before it begins - at the cost of Travis’ own future and life as he knows it.
This is by no means a happy ending. But it’s also undeniably poignant.
“In the Tall Grass” Ending Explained
Never before has a field been quite this labyrinthine. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’ll be explaining the ending of “In the Tall Grass”. Come along as we take a deep dive into this dense and often confusing Netflix original film in an attempt to better appreciate both the film’s convoluted plot and themes.
It might go without saying given the title, but this video will contain major spoilers. So if you haven’t seen the movie yet but intend to, go watch it now and then come back to us!
People can’t get enough Stephen King content, and Netflix seems only too happy to provide subscribers with their next terrifying cinematic fix. An adaptation of the 2012 novella co-written by King and his son Joe Hill, “In the Tall Grass” has a simple premise, but it’s one that yields an abundance of narrative twists and unnerving moments.
“In the Tall Grass” opens on siblings Becky and Cal, as they drive to San Diego. Becky is pregnant and when she begins to feel nauseous, they pull over near an old church so she can… get some air [Becky pukes]. Soon after, however, a young boy’s cries for help draw them into a field of tall grass. Before they enter, they hear a woman’s voice telling the boy not to call out. Cal goes crashing in nonetheless, while Becky - who seems far more uneasy about the whole thing - slowly follows behind. Thus… the nightmare begins.
In the dense grass, the siblings quickly lose track of both each other and the road. There’s more to it than run-of-the-mill disorientation however; space seems to work differently in the field. One moment Becky’s voice is coming from Cal’s left, the next moment it sounds as if she’s somewhere else entirely. Frustration turns into panic as they become just as lost as Tobin. mIt isn’t until evening that Becky finds someone - Tobin’s father Ross. He tells her to stay close but she soon loses him in the grass. Meanwhile, an exhausted Cal has an encounter of his own - with a dirty and thoroughly creepy Tobin, carrying a dead crow. The boy confirms Cal’s suspicions: however impossible it might sound, the grass moves people around as it pleases. Tobin then leads him to a giant rock in a clearing, which he claims teaches people to understand the tall grass; just then, however, Becky is attacked.
Cutting to a daytime scene, we learn that the father of Becky’s child, Travis, has followed them into the field. This is when things start to get dark, deadly and more than a little confusing. Led by Tobin, who claims to have met Travis already, the new arrival discovers Becky’s decomposed corpse. Travis is devastated, but that’s replaced by bewilderment when he hears Tobin and his parents OUTSIDE the grass. They’re soon drawn in by Travis’ calls and their runaway dog. Cal and Becky are also seen arriving, and when most of the group comes together, it becomes clear that this isn’t just a non-chronological approach to storytelling on the part of the filmmaker - time is no longer working in a linear fashion. Travis came looking for Cal and Becky after they entered the field, yet was also in the grass before them.
Now, before we move any further, it’s worth acknowledging that this is a film that revels in mystery. There are a lot of moving parts, and even by the time the credits roll, many questions remain unanswered. What we do know however, is that the field defies the laws of time and space. It might be a clearly defined piece of land in the geographic sense, but for the people within its boundaries, nothing is concrete.
Adding to the scare factor is the fact that the way in which this plays out isn’t random; the tall grass seems to have a mind of its own, manipulating time to pull people into its clutches. Cal and Becky are pulled in by Tobin, and Travis is pulled in to find Becky, while Tobin and his family are drawn in by Travis. Past, present and future lose all meaning in and around the tall grass; moments in time are instead pieced together to suit the grass’ needs.
Of course, at the center of all of this, is the giant rock that Tobin showed to Cal. The grass is really just an extension of the rock and its willpower. Essentially, the rock is the brain; the tall grass is its body. Ultimately it seeks to assimilate the people it lures into this body, which occurs when a person touches the rock. The moment this happens, they become part of the grass and forever rooted within it. The field ensnares people like a spider’s web, but once Ross touches the rock, he becomes the spider - an agent of violence to carry out the rock’s dark purpose. When the others refuse to touch the rock, he tries to force them, and when they fight back, he kills them - horrifically, we might add! But time is cyclical in the tall grass and as we’ve already seen, death isn’t a once in a lifetime thing here.
The question is, what does the rock want? Well, it’s hard to say with certainty. The rock is the film’s biggest and most enduring mystery. Like so many other malicious supernatural forces from pop culture, it seems to be driven by an insatiable hunger - seeking to assimilate all who enter the grass. We see the result of this process in the bodies buried around the rock, and in the grass humanoids that take Becky. According to the film’s costume designer Ginger Martini, these grass monsters - which were not in the source material - are “the spirits of the people who didn’t make it out”. There’s another clue in the prophetic carvings on the rock - which seem to anticipate some of the film’s events. The nearby the “Church of the Black Rock of the Redeemer” suggests that perhaps people once worshipped the rock. Could they have also created the carvings? Ultimately, all we can do is speculate.
By looking at the film’s larger themes however, we can come to better understand what the rock and the tall grass represent. All of these characters are trapped, forced to wander and die in cyclical patterns - much as in real life, people make the same bad decisions over and over again, or allow themselves to be defined by their regrets. The grass can be seen as a metaphor for the way we can lose our way in life and end up repeating the same old mistakes. When Ross touches the rock, he frees himself from self-awareness, giving up on his own agency, and achieving a kind of blissful ignorance. While the rest of the group attempts to escape the grass, they remain stuck because they fail to grow as individuals.
Alternatively, the rock and its modus operandi could also be seen as an analogy for fixed, dogmatic ideologies and their followers. Ross is essentially an extreme example of how people attempt to force others to adopt their way of thinking, and are unsatisfied until everyone thinks the same way.
Either way, it’s only through Travis’ act of self-sacrifice that this cycle is finally broken. By choosing to touch the rock, Travis makes a definitive choice. And by choosing to break the cycle, he saves Cal, Tobin, Becky and his unborn child. Clinging to his own identity, even as the grass assimilates him, he’s able to send Tobin to the church, so that Tobin can stop Cal and Becky from entering the field. This action, in turn, allows them to avoid the cycle before it begins - at the cost of Travis’ own future and life as he knows it.
This is by no means a happy ending. But it’s also undeniably poignant.
Have an idea you want to see made into a WatchMojo video? Check out our suggest page and submit your idea.
Step up your quiz game by answering fun trivia questions! Love games with friends? Challenge friends and family in our leaderboard! Play Now!