Jessica Biel In Trailer For August Horror Offering 'The Tall Man'

She won't be going toe-to-toe with Wolverine after all. That's hardly to say Jessica Biel will be done setting pulses racing after her turn next month in "Total Recall."

As evinced by the trailer below, she's next due for a walk on the darker side in "The Tall Man" Aug. 31.

Directed by Pascal Laugier, the horror thriller sets the beautiful Biel as nurse Julia Denning amid a middle-of-nowhere mining town with an epidemic of disappearing children. Locals blame the disappearances on a mysterious, shadowed entity they call "The Tall Man" (Hooray, a title!)  She's not buying it, right up until her young son David vanishes in the middle of one dark night.

So, how does the trailer hold up? Well, it depends on how many times you've seen this premise before. Have you seen "Ringu" or "The Ring" or "The Ring Two?" How about "The Others?" Or just about any other movie you could mention that sets up a mother and her young child against a supernatural force, often in a very isolated area and shot to have a decidedly foggy tone to it?

The premise won't break any new ground. It's about as predictable a plot as comes down the pike. That means it's going to be entirely on Biel to keep this interesting. That's no bad thing, either. She's obviously easy on the eyes, and a decent actress who could carry this the way Naomi Watts carried "The Ring." But for want of anything necessarily original, it's going to come down to execution, because she's the only major-name star on the cast.