‘Longlegs’ Movie Review: An Exquisitely Moody Procedural That Drowns You In Dread
Photo from Neon
From Jeremy Kibler
After so much hype from Neon’s savvy marketing campaign that suggested Longlegs to be a portal into Satan’s lair, how is one supposed to even describe a film that could never live up to such hyperbolic claims? What writer-director Osgood Perkins’ fourth horror film does do, however, is simply—or not so simply—keep one on edge from frame one. That ability takes its own kind of filmmaking alchemy, and Longlegs never ceases in making the viewer feel like they’re drowning in dread.
It’s hard for any film about a driven female FBI agent tailing a serial killer not to be compared to The Silence of the Lambs. FBI Special Agent Lee Parker (Maika Monroe) does have a bit of Clarice Starling in her, although she’s really not much of a people person. A series of unsolved family murders has been committed (or persuaded) by a killer who never actually enters any of the family homes, but he does leave coded letters by the name of “Longlegs.” As Lee falls harder and harder into this strange case, she realizes that she may have actually met this elusive man on her 9th birthday.
As a serial-killer thriller with a satanic bent, the story is pretty barebones but constructed as an involving, serpentine procedural. The time and place are inferred to be the 1990s in Oregon (like with a photo of President Bill Clinton at the FBI), and the production design couldn’t feel more specific and lived-in. While other film influences are definitely there, Perkins has his own minimalist visual language that’s precise in its framing and methodical in its pacing. If Perkins’ previous films (The Blackcoat’s Daughter, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, and Gretel and Hansel) announced the filmmaker’s masterful command of tone and mood, Longlegs is his most haunting and disturbing work yet (with a surprising, leavening sense of humor at times).
An excellent Maika Monroe plays Lee as a quiet but perceptive young woman, as if she is literally facing her past every moment of her day. She’s highly intuitive, maybe even psychic at times, and as grim as her work. We may not see the entire face of Longlegs at first, but cinematographer Andres Arochi frames the early sights of him in a way that’s just as startling and even more off-kilter, in the style a home movie captured on 16 mm film no less. Nicolas Cage, of course, plays the titular Longlegs, a childish, deeply evil mix between Geppetto, Buffalo Bill, and Robert Jacks’ version of Leatherface. He goes big in small doses, fully committed to showing the world one of the weirdest, most volatile, and creepiest horror-movie boogeymen in recent memory. Anything else about Longlegs and Cage’s performance (or his off-putting pasty-white prosthetics) should be discovered by the viewer, and anyone who still dismisses Cage’s talent hasn’t been paying attention.
Also making a mark are Blair Underwood, always a reliable ray of charisma, as Lee’s superior; Kiernan Shipka, who gets one riveting scene with a chilling monologue; and finally, as Lee’s hoarding, God-fearing mother, Alicia Witt is on another level here, unlike anything we’ve seen from her before.
Lofty claims in a film’s marketing should honestly have no bearing on the film itself, and fortunately, Longlegs is sinister and hair-raising all on its own. Perkins manages to unsettle not just through stark, unforgettable imagery but through his exquisitely moody shot composition, effective sound design, and unexpected editing choices. Not like a standard case in need of solving, the film goes down a mysterious narrative road that won’t fully satisfy in filling in the whys and hows, but it doesn’t seem like it was meant to, either. It’s hard to make sense of tragedy and the influence that one can have over another, and even the extreme insinuation and suggestion of certain revelations are loaded enough to be just as queasy as any grisly violence. Playing out like an uncanny, cloven-hooved nightmare, Longlegs holds the viewer in its lingering spell.
Rating: 4/5
Longlegs is currently in theaters.
