The Tall Man (2012)

The Tall Man is a 2012 mystery film written and directed by Pascal Laugier. It was filmed in the Kootenay region of Southeastern British Columbia and stars Jessica Biel.

Synopsis: The former mining town of Cold Rock, Washington has become poor since the mine closed six years ago, and the local families have few prospects. The situation is worsened by a spate of child disappearances, blamed by a local legend of a supernatural figure called the "Tall Man".

Since the mysterious death of her doctor husband, Nurse Julia Denning (Jessica Biel) has tended the town's free clinic alone, delivering babies for low-income and unprepared teen girls and trying to comfort mothers of the recently abducted. She decries the legend of the "Tall Man" but one night she finds the babysitter tied up and her young son David (Jakob Davies) abducted by a hooded figure. She frantically tries to find David whilst federal investigator Lieutenant Dodd (Stephen McHattie) and the local sheriff (William B. Davis) try to track down the Tall Man and the abducted children.

In a plot twist, it becomes apparent that Julia is not David's mother: she is his abductor. David was not abducted from her, he was rescued by his real mother, a homeless woman who was afraid that the police would dismiss her accusations as the ramblings of a madwoman and instead believe the well-respected Julia. Julia admits to the kidnapping and murder of the abducted children and is arrested and imprisoned.

But in a further plot twist, Julia's confession of murder is false. She and her still-living husband are agents of an secret global program that abducts children from poor families and passes them alive to better-off families for adoption, rationalising that they can provide them with more money, education and opportunities than their real parents could provide.

In a closing narration, one of the abductees talks about her "three mothers" (her birth mother, adopted mother, and Julia), how she loves all of them, and how she’s willing to stay in the city rather than return home to Cold Rock and her real parents.