The Secret

I was expecting anything, but Laugier again managed to surprise me. During the first act or so, The Tall Man works exactly as the synopsis says, but then it makes an abrupt turn and everything is different. This will piss off horror fans seeking genre purity (which, paradoxically, wasn’t the case even in Martyrs), but I see it very positively. On the one hand, it’s very different from Martyrs, but at the same quite similar from a certain point of view, in the way the film plays with the expectations of the viewer, deviating to other genres and putting forward some food for thought (this looks awful when you write it! :-D). Jessica Biel is fine. The Tall Man is hands-down an above average film (technically, it’s flawless), but to be certain about “how much above average” I liked it, I will have to let it lager for some time, maybe watch it again. I’m not disappointed, I am not enthusiastic, either. Well, I’m reasonably enthusiastic, I have to appreciate how nicely and ingeniously it is put together, but it didn’t win my heart… :-D 8/10 for the time being. (30/07/2012)

I wouldn’t have guessed it, but Jessica Biel really surprised me here. After I watched this movie, I had an unexpected feeling like when I had watched the Shadowhunters and I was shocked by how good the movie was; really precise, interesting and thanks to the story, really memorable. The same goes for The Tall Man – a movie I had no clue about and suddenly BAM! I enjoyed it from the beginning till the very end. An absolutely amazing and well-done thriller, lock, stock and barrel. There were good scenes, there were some illogical scenes, but there was also a mysterious atmosphere that I wouldn’t have expected at all. This movie turned out to be a stellar movie experience, which doesn’t have an issue with flipping the story idea from one side to the other and constantly shocking me. I was really happy about it. (28/03/2014)

If I've criticized Laugier for a sloppy script in his previous works, but I have to turn that criticism into praise. That’s because here, the well-written characters draw you into the plot, and they are so lifelike and well-acted (Jessica Biel is not just a pretty face) that they can withstand plot twists that I have no problem defending logically, which is unprecedented in the genre. This is perhaps also because it's actually quite far away from being horror. [Btw: Stephen McHattie is the reincarnation of Lance Henriksen in the best sense. :)] (30/07/2012)

A strange genre crossover that ultimately wants to end up a social drama rather than a mystery crime thriller. While the two major twists do move the story somewhere (the question is where), I'm convinced that if the whole narrative had been reduced to "search for a Mystery Man who kidnaps children" (without the twists and spasmodic social themes), the whole thing could have turned out noticeably better. The first half an hour lures you in with its mysterious atmosphere, but after that it's unfortunately pretty pathetic. The kind of film that sort of slipped through the fingers of a fairly ambitious filmmaker (Martyrs certainly didn't leave me calm). (07/03/2019)