While much of Stephen King’s work is set in small-town Maine, he’s also woven tales of terror set all around the country. And in multiple stories, King’s offered some advice for roadtrippers—don’t stop driving. Whether it’s the couple who wind up the prey of a child cult in "Children of the Corn," or the unfortunate pair who end up trapped in small town inhabited by the ghosts of dead rock stars in "You Know They’ve Got a Hell of a Band," the King oeuvre is full of reasons never to stray from the interstate.

Esquire Fiction

Unfortunately, Becky and Cal DeMuth of In the Tall Grass didn’t stay safely in their car. The short story, written by King and his son Joe Hill, first appeared in Esquire in 2012, and was just adapted into a new film for Netflix. It tells the story of the brother and sister, as they follow the cries of a lost child off the road and into the six-foot-high grasslands of rural Kansas. Once they're in there, things get a bit weird—so let’s dive into the weeds.

So what happened?

While the film starts with the simplest premise—brother and sister walk into some grass—it quickly becomes pretty confusing. Becky and Cal leave their car parked by a deserted church (which has a suspicious number of abandoned cars outside of it) and search for the boy, who tells them his name is Tobin Humboldt. But they become separated from each other in the grass, which is especially concerning as Becky is six months pregnant. Soon they realize that time and space don't work normally in the grass, which separates those who enter it and keeps them trapped in a time loop, wandering through the reeds.

Tobin’s parents, Ross and Natalie (the unrelated Patrick Wilson and Rachel Wilson) are also trapped in the grass. But Ross, who finds Becky, isn’t like everyone else. For one thing, he’s a little chipper about the whole situation. For another, he seems to be able to find anyone he wants just fine, thanks to the fact that he’s touched the large, mystical rock at the center of the field. And he’s really keen to make sure that Becky, Cal, Tobin, and everyone else touch it too, promising that it will help them understand the ways of the grass. "Once you touch it, you’ll know,” he insists. “It’s like accepting the host… Five little fingers on its face, and you will be redeemed.”

Luckily, the father of Becky’s child, Travis, comes looking for Becky and Cal. Though they’re still stuck in the grass’s loop, in the real world they’ve been missing for months. Travis spots their car along the side of the road, so he heads into the grass too. There, he gets lost in turn, and calls out to a family along the side of the road—the Humboldts. That’s the loop—even though in the viewer’s timeline Travis is the last to get into the grass and the Humboldts were the first, the Humboldts were lured in by Travis.

Will Buie Jr. plays Tobin Humboldt in In the Tall Grass.

In the grass, Travis stumbles upon Becky’s dead body, and snags her necklace as a keepsake, even though we know there’s another version of Becky that’s still alive in the field.

Eventually, they all reunite near the rock. Natalie warns everyone that her husband has gone off the deep end, which he promptly proves by crushing her head with his bare hands.

Then it gets really trippy when Becky, trying to escape Ross, is carried off by some creepy humanoid grass monsters, who deposit her at the rock. As she begins to go into labor, a hole opens up at the base of the rock, revealing countless humans who’ve been trapped by its power, all writhing in agony. Becky passes out, but comes to find Cal feeding her what he insists is grass, but what is the really the body of her baby. (It’s just as upsetting as it sounds.) As she watches, Cal transforms into Ross.

Horror veteran Patrick Wilson plays Ross Humboldt in the film.

Travis finally makes his way to the rock again, and finds a dying Becky. “This is never gonna stop,” warns Tobin of Ross. “He’s gonna keep killing us over, and over again.”
Ross stabs Travis, before he and and Becky kill Ross for good. But Becky soon succumbs to her injuries, and with his girlfriend and their baby dead, a mortally wounded Travis touches the rock, despite Tobin’s warning that “if you touch it, you’ll never leave.” Now imbued with the knowledge of how to escape, Travis transports Tobin from the field into the old church across the road. Tobin emerges from the church—just as Cal and Becky exit their car and prepare to head into the grass. He convinces them it’s a bad idea, and they drive off to the police station. Listening in the grass, Travis dies knowing that Becky and the baby have been saved.

What are the differences between the story and the movie?

In its jump from the glossy page to the big screen, In the Tall Grass underwent some major changes. King and Hill’s story is a lot simpler: Becky and Cal get lost in the grass with the Humboldts, and are all either killed or give themselves over to the rock. The cycle begins anew at the end of the story, as travelers in an RV are lured in by Becky’s cries for help. Travis is mentioned, but doesn’t appear, no one escapes the grass, and there’s no time looping—though Stephen King fans won’t be surprised to learn that the baby-eating stuff is right from the original story.

In adding the time loop, the film made the original story a lot more complex, and open to a lot more interpretations. If, in the end, Becky and Cal never go into the grass to begin with, does this mean that Travis never comes looking for them? How was Tobin able to leave when he’d touched the rock earlier in the film? The movie doesn’t really answer these questions. But the final shot of In the Tall Grass is Travis collapsing to the ground, which sends a pretty strong message that it’s curtains for him, the film’s true hero. And while that’s pretty grim, it’s a positively cheerful ending compared to King and Hill’s story.

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