Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1176246
11 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 13 OCTOBER 2019 FILM ENVIRONMENT IN THE TALL GRASS IN THE RUNNING IN THE LOOP IN TOO DEEP IN THE SH*T ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Beaks are a bird's best friend. Having swapped hands and fin- gers for wings, birds switched to beaks as their main picking tool, not least food. So it's no surprise that beaks come in all shapes and sizes. Among the weirdest that come our way is that of the Eurasian spoonbill (M. paletta). It's long with a flat- tened, rounded end like a spatula - hence their names. Watch- ing this big white bird wading in the shallow waters at Salina, Is-Simar or Għadira nature reserves and expertly snapping up crustaceans amply demonstrates what a great tool that beak is. The Eurasian spoonbill is a very scarce migrant in Malta, so it's always a treat to see one glide down for a nibble in one of these protected sites – only last week a flock of four spent hours gobbling shrimps and killifish at Is-Simar. Outside these relatively sheltered zones, these supposedly protected birds of- ten get shot. Text: Victor Falzon - Photo: Aron Tanti 681. EURASIAN SPOONBILL vegetation Visit Friends of the Earth's website for more information about our work, as well as for information about how to join us. You can also support us by sending us a donation - www.foemalta.org/donate GREEN IDEA OF THE WEEK 577: Find out more and try our delicious recipe: www.foemalta.org/goodfood low-budget genre fare that would continue to endear him to audiences ever-hungry for cult kookery. His obsession with enclosed spaces would continue with Haunter (2013), and so In the Tall Grass's one-location set- ting feels like the natural con- tinuation of an established ca- reer trajectory. But while Netflix's notori- ously homogenised look is very much accounted for (there's a slickness to the photography that would perhaps have been absent in any other Natali fea- ture), there's no sense of this being a rush-job for the direc- tor. Liberally expanding on the short novella while keeping its thematic roots (ahem) intact, Natali crafts a well-designed chiller, cleaving to the very best of King and Hill's capa- bilities of tugging at universal themes of familial pain and trauma, as well as the tyranny of conventional societal ex- pectations. As things escalate and the atmospheric monstrosity at the core of the story gains a more physical shape, what could have been just a hor- ror theme park ride expands into something queasier and deeper, without the film need- ing to spell out or overly intel- lectualise anything. In other words, Natali makes good on his reputation as a cult film- maker with a firm finger on the pulse of horror: he crafts another worthwhile feature in that genre's contemporary echelons. The verdict In the assured hands of a reliable quasi-visionary Vincenzo Natali, the slim source material is trans- formed into a more-than- adequate pre-Halloween chiller to pass the time while glued to our favourite streaming service. It would have been better served by the one-episode anthology format, but it nonetheless succeeds in creating a be- guiling sense of escalating dread, held together by a solidly coherent thematic thread. In the Tall Grass is cur- rently streaming on Netflix ★ ★ ★ IN THE TALL GRASS (16+)