Tall and Slender

Leave a comment

At first I thought she was mistaken.  A friend mentioned, in a litany of horror films, The Tall Man.  I thought she meant The Slender Man.  Then I saw an online post that referenced The Tall Man and I grew curious.  That curiosity almost cost me my lunch.  Not for the reasons you might assume, but because The Tall Man’s one of those movies that seems to think the camera has to be in constant motion.  I have an inner ear condition that makes me extremely susceptible to motion sickness.  It happens even if I watch train cars passing (which is, indeed, one of the images with which the movie starts).  I kept telling myself, give it a few more minutes, maybe they’ll buy a tripod.  I’m glad I stayed with it because it was inspired by the Slender Man urban legend.  Later, The Slender Man was made into a movie, perhaps inspired by The Tall Man.

Although horror, this probably isn’t what you think.  The reason I was glad that I stuck with it is that, although confusing, it has a good message and everything becomes clear at the very end.  Director misdirection is very common, of course, but this one worked on me.  There’ll be spoilers here—so you’re warned.  The common thread behind both Tall and Slender is missing children.  Some mythical or folkloristic creature snatches them away.  There’s no supernatural in this movie.  It revolves around a widowed nurse in a dying town, Cold Rock, Washington.  The children are suffering and the nurse wants them to live a better life.  Here’s a spoiler—read no further unless you want the ending ruined.  I’m serious.  The next paragraph will spill the beans!

Her husband isn’t really dead.  Working together they kidnap working class children and get them to loving, caring, affluent families.  There’s a ton of social commentary in this film.  As the nurse explains, the system is broken.  Too many children are left to suffer and the only way to break the cycle is to break the rules.  The appearance of William B. Davis made me think X-Files, but his role here is a straight-up sheriff.  There is no “Tall Man,” just like there is no Slender Man, but legends do take on lives of their own.  This isn’t one of my favorite movies, but it is better than I was led to believe.  And having a social conscience, while not rare, is always a good thing to see in a horror movie.  If only they could keep the camera still.

Fast One Flood

Leave a comment

I’m not sure what to believe anymore. This crisis of faith revolves not around religion, but around media. Pundits have been saying for some time that the internet has meant the slow death of journalism, and there are so many websites that redistribute news that its like the whole world is involved in a constant, perpetual game of “telephone.” All of this is preface to a story a friend sent me that appeared on the website God. I’m not sure I trust God. The story is too good to be true. At least in a schadenfreude sort of way. God is hosted on thegoodlordabove.com, and, well, we all know about dot coms. The article concerns the destruction of Answers in Genesis’ Noah’s Ark theme park by a flood. That is believable. Floods do occur, as Noah knew. What becomes unbelievable is that the National Weather Service forecaster stated that there were no storm clouds in the area at the time. That qualifies as a miracle.

Martin,_John_-_The_Deluge_-_1834

Did this really happen? I don’t know. I wasn’t there. Plenty of times when I was there (wherever there happened to be at the time) I wasn’t even sure what happened. Can I find the truth? One of the police sites for internet rumors is Snopes (also a dot com). I remember when Snopes began as a place to quell fears of urban legends. Back when the worldwide web was young, there was a verisimilitude to stories gleaned from the net. Living in the sparsely populated Midwest, it was easy to believe that some of these things could happen to you. At times I held onto Snopes like a crucifix, especially if I had to go out alone at night. Snopes tells me that thegoodlordabove is not to be trusted. The story is false, like others that have originated on the site. Answers in Genesis, unfortunately, is still going strong with its theme park.

Authoritative texts aren’t what they used to be. There was a day when all you had to do was pull a black leather book off the shelf to find the definitive answers. In Genesis or any other of the books. Now we rely on the worldwide consensus of the web. You can’t trust God on a website. Snopes, however, is pretty reliable. It’s the Scully to our natural Mulder. That’s why the web will never have the same impact as print media. Even the website for your bank or government can be cleverly faked. I might’ve looked no further had the purported flood not fallen from a cloudless sky. I guess I’d better be a wary believer. For the internet tells me so.