Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs arrives, as horror movies occasionally do, with tales of preview audiences freaking out, vomiting, and running from the theater. It’s part of an apparent push to make each horror movie look like the scariest ever. While I didn’t experience that reaction, Longlegs is a unique visual achievement featuring a fantastic look, perfect pacing, and an all-time creepy villain. It’s enough to overcome a plot burdened by tiresome horror cliches.
Longlegs is full of unsettling and disgusting material: entire families brutally murdered, killers who act like clowns, creepy dolls, and gross old houses occupied by hoarders. Directed by Oz Perkins, the son of Anthony, the plot of Longlegs echoes that of The Silence of the Lambs, with a young and untested female FBI agent chasing a serial killer.
The film stars scream-queen-of-the-moment Maika Monroe as Lee Harker, an FBI agent assigned by her boss (Blair Underwood) to work on a serial killer case, in which the perpetrator is “Longlegs,” a possibly Satanic murderer who has managed to inspire fathers to murder their families. In doing so, he always leaves behind coded clues, specifically targeting girls whose birthday is the 14th of the month. This, seemingly lifted from Zodiac and its various imitators, is the film’s weakest part.
The best element is the film’s look. While heavily inspired by 1970s cinema, the film’s set in the ‘90s, which we can tell from the lack of cell phones and Bill Clinton’s picture hanging in government buildings. It plays with changing aspect ratios, a gimmick I normally despise, but this time it works.
Nicolas Cage’s Longlegs is a wonderful creation. The actor’s stylized in clownish makeup while speaking in a voice that sounds like the old pro wrestling character Paul Bearer. The character is terrifying but is occasionally funny, especially in a scene where he goes to a convenience store. This performance, while different enough from most of the “crazy Cage” turns of the past, will provide plenty of material for the next edition of that “Nicolas Cage losing his shit” reel.
Monroe is right there with him, as a character who’s shut off and traumatized even before we learn anything of her background. In that, the film introduces the longtime indie actress Alicia Witt, who gives a chilling performance as her mother. Kiernan Shipka makes a memorable cameo as a survivor of the killer. Also worth noting is that after a decade of horror films making fun of the Satanic Panic of the 1980s—including one that was titled Satanic Panic—here’s a movie that’s about Satanism and the occult that takes it at face value.