Cold Rock is an aptly named town. Jobs have evaporated, and the people live an isolated existence where they take the law into their own hands. It is a town that has died – everywhere is streaked with rain and oil, the townsfolk are permanently bedraggled, their faces bleached of colour. Sometimes children are born in Cold Rock that are not wanted; often, these youngsters simply disappear. Someone is taking them.
In young David, we have a genuinely appealing child. With a head full of crayons and castles, he is ripe for kidnap by the fabled Tall Man. Julia (Jessica Biel), who looks after him, has a bloodied confrontation with the indistinguishable figure – despite my initial thoughts, The Tall Man is not a spectral, superhuman figure, but a real, physical threat. And yet when Julia is brought to the café which seems to be a meeting point for the locals, their hostilities are directed towards her.
Rather than a full-blooded horror, this film is about a handful of people who make the most extraordinary sacrifices to remove the many children from their stultifying life in Cold Rock – or presumably any other similarly perverse and hopeless community – in order to place them in surroundings with a better future, or any future at all. I would have preferred it if the writing had not been quite so oblique concerning this fairly important revelation. In view of the extraordinary sacrifice this handful of people make in delivering children with no future into the hands of The Tall Man, the reality of what they are doing might have been more clearly defined. As it is, the brow-beaten, teary-eyed staring into space from characters like Julia could have been better explained.
Do money and respectability necessarily ensure a child has a better life? That seems to be the message here. Social commentary given the trappings of a potential horror film – beautifully told and acted, incredibly well directed. At its core, the story itself seems judgemental.
In young David, we have a genuinely appealing child. With a head full of crayons and castles, he is ripe for kidnap by the fabled Tall Man. Julia (Jessica Biel), who looks after him, has a bloodied confrontation with the indistinguishable figure – despite my initial thoughts, The Tall Man is not a spectral, superhuman figure, but a real, physical threat. And yet when Julia is brought to the café which seems to be a meeting point for the locals, their hostilities are directed towards her.
Rather than a full-blooded horror, this film is about a handful of people who make the most extraordinary sacrifices to remove the many children from their stultifying life in Cold Rock – or presumably any other similarly perverse and hopeless community – in order to place them in surroundings with a better future, or any future at all. I would have preferred it if the writing had not been quite so oblique concerning this fairly important revelation. In view of the extraordinary sacrifice this handful of people make in delivering children with no future into the hands of The Tall Man, the reality of what they are doing might have been more clearly defined. As it is, the brow-beaten, teary-eyed staring into space from characters like Julia could have been better explained.
Do money and respectability necessarily ensure a child has a better life? That seems to be the message here. Social commentary given the trappings of a potential horror film – beautifully told and acted, incredibly well directed. At its core, the story itself seems judgemental.