Here’s a detailed review of In the Tall Grass , the novella co-written by Stephen King and his son Joe Hill. First published in 2012 as a Kindle single and later included in the 2015 collection The Bazaar of Bad Dreams , In the Tall Grass is a tight, claustrophobic horror story. The premise is deceptively simple: siblings Cal and Becky DeMuth hear a boy crying for help from a vast field of tall grass off a forgotten Kansas highway. They enter to rescue him, only to discover the grass is a living, shifting labyrinth that warps space, time, and sanity. What Works Exceptionally Well 1. Immediate, Relentless Tension Unlike some of King’s door-stoppers, this novella hits the ground running. There’s no lengthy setup. Within pages, Cal and Becky are lost. The horror isn’t built through backstory but through immediate sensory disorientation: the rustling stalks, the suffocating heat, the inability to see more than a few feet ahead. The pacing is masterful—a sustained, breathless panic.
Spoiler-adjacent : The conclusion is deliberately unsatisfying in a cosmic horror sense. Some readers find it brilliantly nihilistic (the grass always wins). Others feel cheated—like the story builds toward a climax that never arrives, opting instead for a recursive, “it was always going to happen this way” loop. If you need tidy resolutions, this will frustrate you.
There is graphic, unflinching body horror: childbirth, cannibalism, mutilation, decay. For fans of King’s gross-out moments (the Achilles tendon scene in The Stand , the bathtub in The Shining ), this is a plus. But if you prefer psychological subtlety, the novella leans heavily on visceral disgust to maintain tension in its back half. stephen king in the tall grass book
The novella blends both voices seamlessly. You get King’s love for small-town Americana gone wrong, blue-collar dialogue, and gruesome physical detail. From Hill, you get tighter, more experimental structure, a younger, more reckless energy, and a mean streak of irony. The ending—bleak, ambiguous, and deeply unsettling—feels more like Hill’s modern nihilism than King’s usual “survive and move on” resolution. Where It Stumbles 1. Character Depth is Minimal Given the length (about 130 pages), there’s little room for backstory. Cal and Becky are sketched just enough to care about—sibling bond, Becky’s pregnancy—but they remain functional archetypes (protective brother, terrified expectant mother). Secondary characters like Ross and Tobin are more disturbing than fully realized. This isn’t The Shining ; you’re here for the situation, not psychological complexity.
Fans of The Ruins by Scott Smith, Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, or King’s own “The Raft” (from Skeleton Crew ). Not recommended for: Those who dislike body horror, ambiguous endings, or plots driven by cosmic indifference rather than human agency. Here’s a detailed review of In the Tall
If you go in expecting a quick, brutal scare with a bitter aftertaste, you’ll leave satisfied. Just don’t look too long into the grass—it might look back.
The mysterious black rock hidden within the grass is a brilliant touch. It’s never fully explained (which is for the best), but touching it grants terrifying knowledge and a connection to the field’s dark will. It transforms characters, particularly the boy Tobin, into prophetic mouthpieces. The rock turns the story from survival horror into cosmic horror—suggesting the grass is an ancient, indifferent god. They enter to rescue him, only to discover
In the Tall Grass is a lean, mean slice of cosmic folk horror that showcases the best of King and Hill’s collaborative strengths: primal fear, inventive monster-making, and a refusal to comfort the reader. It’s not a character study or a meditation on grief like Pet Sematary . It’s a nightmare you can finish in one sitting—one that lingers like the memory of a bad dream you can’t quite shake.