Summary
“The Tall Grass” is scary, frantic fun.
This recap of Netflix’s Love, Death & Robots season 2, episode 5, “The Tall Grass,” contains spoilers.
Read the recap of the previous chapter.
“The Tall Grass” represents episode 5 in Love, Death & Robots season 2. It starts with ominous music, showing a coal-burning train speeding to its destination. As the passenger begins to fall asleep in his passenger car, the train makes a screeching halt. It startles with the smartly dressed man, who looks like he just stepped out of an Agatha Christie novel.
His name is Lairo, and he steps outside into the hall and out of the train to see what all the fuss is about. Concerned, he is then startled by the train conductor. He tells Lairo to get back on board, but the man insists they have time for a smoke. “Of course,” the conductor says, “but don’t wander off.” He warns him the train will go on without him if he is not back in time. The train conductor walks away from the man, looking off to a field of tall grass in front of him with a sense of urgency to get back on the train.
Lairo, a dangerous combination of arrogance and curiosity, wanders off into the tall grass until he sees something peculiar. Still smoking his hand-rolled cigarette, he walks for a few minutes, gently pushing aside the blades, and is startled again. He chuckles, of course. It was nothing. He begins to walk back when he hears the conductor call, “All aboard!” But he gets lost. Like a whiteout in the snow, all he sees are blades of grass in each direction. When he hears the second call, he begins to panic. He runs in several directions, begging for help and not to be left behind. Then, he sees it.
Scary, human-like creatures begin to come out of the rich farmland. Screaming and roaring but without mouths (think the White Walkers in Game of Thrones, but scarier). Lairo runs away, avoiding the creatures at every turn. Then, suddenly, he rolls down a hole and loses his glasses. He finds them, looks up, and a creature is towering over him. All the creatures are bellowing, now with their mouths wide open, with almost a full mustache of yellow hair inside each lip flying out like streamers.
He turns to run, kicks and claws to get away when they grab his ankles to pull him back in. He somehow gets out of the hole and starts to take a straight sprint for the train he sees moving between the giant blades. As he reaches the clearing and is near the tracks of the moving train, a creature tackles him. He is dragged back into the field, surrounded by a couple of dozen creatures who are about to hack him limb from limb. Their ethereal lights at full blast, illuminating the night sky and blinding Lairo.
As Lairo is about to say his last goodbyes and salutations, the train conductor comes out of nowhere and scares most of the creatures off with a torch in his hand. As he helps his passenger make it back up the hill and run for the back of the train, they can hear one of the creatures roaring in disappointment because it will have to do without supper that night. As both men rest on the back of the train car, Lairo asks the train conductor what those things were. The conductor does not know. He says they could be people, but all he knows is they are afraid of fire.
“Don’t tell anyone,” he tells Lairo as he walks away and back into the train. “They won’t believe you anyway.” Lairo looks at the tall grass fields moving quickly before his eyes and the hundreds of lights illuminating the green blades, signifying that there are even more creatures out there than he thought possible.
