Sometimes a movie just makes your bones shiver, and Longlegs is one such experience. A bleak, unsettling, and disturbed descent into the dark abysses of Hell, this horror-thriller from writer/director Oz Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter) is as atmospheric and creepy as they come–just don’t buy into the hype cycle that it’s the second coming of the Anti-Christ.
Horror alum Maika Monroe (It Follows, The Guest) plays a socially awkward FBI agent who is attempting to track down a killer who leaves coded letters behind–as well as no other evidence that he was in any of the homes where families are left butchered.
Longlegs is essentially Seven with a supernatural twist and soaked in utter despair.
Monroe is fantastic as always as she portrays a young woman whose seemingly only skill is doing what she does so well here. Agent Lee Harker is neither unlikable nor depressing, yet she can barely operate in normal settings; she’s best suited for following patterns and getting inside the heads of very bad people.
And Longlegs is a very bad person. Portrayed by an unrecognizable and unleashed Nicolas Cage, the killer here is an absolutely frightening figure–at least visually. Completely off his rocker and physically disfigured, he’s the kind of person you’d avoid on a sidewalk; the fact that he might have relations with the Devil doesn’t help matters.
As frightening as he is, I am not convinced Longlegs is going to go down as a timeless killer. We of course know the big baddies from slasher flicks. We remember the dude from Seven and that final, menacing scene in Zodiac. Hannibal Lecter, of course. Norman Bates. Longlegs the killer and Longlegs the movie is missing that extra something.
While I didn’t mind the supernatural stuff–in fact, Longlegs is much more demonic than the eerie trailers suggest–at times it feels like a cheat. Or a crutch. Or at the very least, it sucks some of the more humanistic sinisterism from the story. How much more frightening would Longlegs be if he were given more depth, more calculating intentions that are purely grounded in human capability? What if Harker truly had to use her wits rather than be helped quite easily by the very forces she is trying to stop? What if the madness at the heart of the murders were just that: madness?
Some may say I’m criticizing Longlegs for being a movie it never intended to be. That may be fair. And to be true, the supernatural angle is compelling and at times horrifying. That doesn’t change the fact that Longlegs is lacking a layer of complexity and sophistication that would propel it into the upper echelon of serial killer thrillers. It’s ever so close, and that’s what makes it frustrating.
Longlegs has a lot to like. It’s incredibly dark, the atmosphere alone can give you nightmares, and any movie that can make you feel unsettled even after the end credits is worthy of attention. It deserves praise–just not the level of praise the early hype cycle has been championing.
Review by Erik Samdahl unless otherwise indicated.