Pascal Laugier made a splash back in 2008 with his hyper violent, nihilistic horror, Martyrs. While it turned a few heads because of the sheer carnage on display, marking it immediately as part of France's "New Extremity" wave of grisly genre flicks, ultimately the response to it was fiercely split. For me, I thought it tried too hard to be shocking at the expense of the story, but it was enough to convince me that Laugier is a director with promise. So it's a little disappointing that his follow-up, The Tall Man, looks so...conventional.
A new international trailer for the film has been released, as the August 31st release date approaches. Jessica Biel stars as Julia Denning, a small town nurse in a town that's been devastated by a number of child disappearances. The superstitious locals don't have any answers to explain it, so they begin blaming the abductions on a dark, shadowy figure known as the Tall Man. Spurred into action by the disappearance of her own son, Julia will stop at nothing to find out the truth.
Laugier's a talented guy, but just as he aimed for the shock factor with his first film, now he appears to be banking too hard on making an acceptable, mainstream horror. There are few scares to be found in this trailer, and hardly a lick of real tension. The response to the film out of the festival circuit wasn't good, and now I'm starting to see why. Check out the trailer for The Tall Man below....[Firstshowing]
