"LONGLEGS" - REVIEW
For what 2024 lacks in superhero movies (and I’m not complainin’ about that), it seems to be making up for it by being a banner year for vibey horror films, both steeped in cinema and religious themes. This year we’ve already had IMMACULATE, THE FIRST OMEN and the (sadly underwhelming) conclusion to the X trilogy, MAXXXINE. Later this year, A24 will be releasing HERETIC, from A QUIET PLACE creators Scott Peck and Bryan Woods, starring Hugh Grant (who is getting freaky in his late career choices, and I am here for it). Right in the middle of summer, we get another freaky, religious-themed horror film, LONGLEGS. I had honestly been delaying my viewing of this film, but as a champion of independent and arthouse fare, and given that this film is distributor NEON’s best opening weekend ever (and now their highest grossing film), I had to finally see it for myself.
The latest film from writer/director Osgood Perkins (THE BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER) takes a page from THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Comparisons to Jonathan Demme‘s 1991 Academy Award-winning masterpiece are fair, but it really only serves as a jumping off point, and then goes somewhere completely different with it. Without giving too much away, the film follows young Clarice Starling-like FBI Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe, IT FOLLOWS), who shows early promise when she correctly, almost clairvoyantly, intuits the location of a serial killer. This gets the attention of Agent Carter (an excellent Blair Underwood, JUST CAUSE), who assigns Lee to a decades-spanning case involving a series of murders by an elusive Buffalo Bill-like killer only known as Longlegs (Nicolas Cage—in the voice of RAISING ARIZONA’s H.I. McDonough: “well hell, y’all know who HE is”). Lee’s early intuitive promise proves to be a liability, because there is a mysterious link between her and the killer. If this sounds like your thing, that’s all I will say about the plot.
What seemingly begins as a richly textured if slightly shallow exercise in style shows itself to be an extremely methodical way of doling out its information. There are two types of suspense: the type in which the audience knows something that the characters don’t, and the type in which we only learn things as the characters learn them. This movie is the second type, as this slow-burn procedural slowly morphs into a proper horror film with a heavy dollop of early 90s Satanic panic. While it might still be a little shallow at the end of the day, the experience is deeply tense, and deeply weird, and darned if it didn’t make me say my prayers.
In a cleverly mannered performance (complete with slight lisp), Monroe plays Lee with the dogged pursuit for justice required to do the job she has to do, and to see the things she has to see, and with the sheltered timidity of a church mouse. While the movie’s dread-filled version of church plays a large part in that, I use the word “mouse” because everything Monroe does here, despite her natural poise and statuesque features, is mousy. It’s a fine line in which she portrays that mousy quality as either naïveté or as a cautious trauma response.
After playing a career full of weirdos, Cage is as adventurous as ever, and at his best when paired with a director that knows exactly how to tap into his specific but bountiful gifts. NEON created buzz with one of the finest marketing campaigns in recent memory, completely shrouding his appearance in secrecy, and the effect is worth it (I’m sure there are images online by now, but do yourself a favor and keep it a secret until you see it).
In addition to Underwood, the supporting cast is uniformly strong. Alicia Witt (LAST HOLIDAY, URBAN LEGEND) gets her best role in years, and Kiernan Shipka (MAD MEN, TWISTERS) turns in haunting and memorable work. They both bring a specificity that the movie either doesn’t have, or is just been very clever about hiding. The craft is exquisite, both evoking the feelings in the air in the early 1990s at the end of one culture war (President Bill Clinton’s mug often appearing over Underwood’s shoulder in his office), and presented with a gritty, overcast, and sometimes just plain dark cinema style from a time before (Perkins also makes great use of oddly replaced 70s rock on the soundtrack). All these elements are woven together, making it feel like waking from a trippy nightmare that occurs during an unexpected mid-afternoon nap.
But is it scary? Of course, this depends on you. For most, nothing is more horrifying than what you can imagine in your own mind, but this movie dares to be different, even ridiculous, in its quest to unnerve us, from its methodical, austere beginning to its dynamite final scene.
Yeah, but is it scary?! Let’s just say I’m now of the age where I’m happy to see horror movies early in the day. I went to an 11 AM screening and emerged from the experience not in the dark of night, but back into bright summer sunlight… with the voice Longlegs in my head.
#longlegs
#neon
#horror
#maikamonroe
#nicolascage
#osgoodperkins
Zach is a proud member of the Minnesota Film Critics Alliance (MNFCA). For more info about Zach, the organization, or to read other great reviews from other great Minnesota-based film critics, click here: https://mnfilmcriticalliance.wordpress.com/