Movie Night: Longlegs (2024)

Ignore the unfair comparisons; “Longlegs” is a chilling, nightmarish supernatural crime thriller that confidently stands on its own legs.

Something must be said about a modern Hollywood film landing in theaters while preserving an aura of uncertainty surrounding it.

As steeped in digital information as we are, “spoilers” for modern cinema run free across the internet, whether through simple posts on one’s Facebook or a news notification adorning the glowing screen of our smartphones. It’s not five minutes after the film’s initial release where various websites offer us an opportunity to unpack any major release’s climax. We’re inundated by the all-too-eager trailers that build to the event, revealing copious amounts of information and laying out plot specifics, mainly at the demands of the fans who have shaped the marketing machine of mainstream Hollywood.

Nothing seems a surprise anymore.

And then there is director Osgood (Oz) Perkins’ (yes, he is indeed the son of Psycho star Anthony Perkins) Longlegs, which managed to arrive – mostly unscathed – with a sense of mystery concealing its vast number of terrors and atrocities.

I’m sure if one wanted to dig before the film unspooled in wide release, they would have been able to uncover the nitty-gritty specifics. But my question would be why someone wanted to do that, especially when we are gifted with something as mysteriously freaky as Longlegs.

Longlegs spans a decades-long manhunt for a serial killer known as, well, “Longlegs” (played by Nicholas Cage).

With the trail cold for several years, a promising new FBI agent, Lee Harker (played by Maika Monroe), is assigned to the case after she displays astonishing intuitions that border on psychic abilities. Within hours of taking the case, Agent Harker cracks several clues, leading to a terrifying game of cat and mouse that threatens the very safety of her mother, Ruth Harker (played by Alicia Witt), and her boss, Agent Carter (played by Blair Underwood).

Ever since the first teasers arrived for Longlegs, it’s been relentlessly compared to prolific, hard-boiled crime thrillers like Jonathan Demme’s 1991 classic The Silence of the Lambs (it even takes place in the early ’90s) and David Fincher’s one-two punch: Se7en and Zodiac.

That’s some pretty lofty company if I say so myself!

Clearly, Longlegs is inspired by and desperate to sit next to the classic “police procedurals” like the ones listed here. Still, it doesn’t feel like Perkins is over-extending beyond his abilities as a writer and director in an attempt to ape Demme or Fincher.

Perkins has obviously studied every nook and cranny like something of an FBI investigator himself.

He understands that the atmosphere should be thick, often stifling from the low-hanging clouds of looming dread. He restrains the blood-letting to sharp bursts that disrupt the primly static exposition of the images that are shaken from a death-like stillness. And he’s keenly aware that our imaginations can get the best of us, allowing the camera to gaze into the darkness where we sketch our deepest fears in the void.

It’s abundantly clear that Perkins was born with the artistic prowess to make something like Longlegs, and even more specifically, he’s got a God-given knack (something that would make the satanic serial killer at the heart of the film’s plot scoff) for laying out some of the most terrifying imagery of recent memory.

He makes it look so effortless it’s almost maddening.

I suspect that many who dare join in on the case of the elusive Longlegs will come away with a nagging deflation.

Many will shrug with contrarian aggravation that it’s nowhere near as frightening as the coveted The Silence of the Lambs. That’s just completely unfair.

For years, Hollywood has tried to recapture Demme’s lightning in a bottle, even luring back old faithful himself, Anthony Hopkins, to purr his psychiatric musings into the ear of another hyperventilating cop and an audience who have found their preliminary fear of Lecter now consigned to a cartoonish caricature — the same condition that rubbed away the magic of slasher superstars like Freddy and Michael. It’s never worked quite like it did in 1991.

Leaning into a supernatural slant, Osgood plucks a fresh boogeyman out of the fiery depths of hell, and he’s lucky to have a gonzo individual like Cage on his side, who’s always more than willing to plunge the deepest depths of “KA-RAZY!”

I’m weary of revealing too much about his character, rendered nearly unrecognizable under facial prosthetics that make him look like Miss Piggy if she underwent too much plastic surgery. Suffice it to say, he’s probably at the height of his game.

It helps we don’t see much of him, and we only get a few really good looks at his contorted mug, but he drips black magic that I’d swear he conjured inside of a pentagram drawn in chalk before he stepped in front of the camera.

What’s even more exciting is that this rare beast of a character will be preserved inside the perimeters of Longlegs.

He won’t stand to be robbed of the fear he so gleefully instills.

And then we have Monroe, a national treasure all her own as Harker. She’s remained a talent to watch since she first entered the horror arena with It Follows.

Bluntly speaking, I couldn’t take my eyes off her performance here, and I hope the masses start beating the Oscar drum from what she was allowed to accomplish with Lee. You’re constantly left wanting to know more about her, and as her past is unpacked among all her peculiarities, she comes up with a completely different flavor when held up to Clarice Starling.

She shares a show-stopping sequence with Cage’s serial killer where the two personalities (best you just let those wash over you) converge in a powder keg. The scene explodes with a chilling “HAIL SATAN” pledge that is probably cracking a smile across the visage of the “Night Stalker” himself, Richard Ramirez, who is busy causing chaos in the next theater over in MaXXXine.

As I said, Perkins wanted a film that would sit comfortably around the table of classics of this type of thriller.

As far as I’m concerned, he has succeeded in something that saturates your nightmares with a poison all its own—something worth discussing alongside Lambs, Se7en, and Zodiac with ecstatic zeal.

I found the opening sequence one of the most terrifying things I’ve seen in quite a long time.

It’s fittingly retro, opening with a 4:3 aspect ratio that resembles something a psychopath is showing you off a projector in their mildewy basement.

Glimpsing Cage’s Longlegs from the chin down, the madman approaches a 9-year-old girl, exclaiming, “IT’S THE ALMOST BIRTHDAY GIRL,” before fully plunging into a frame that actually made me jump (I’ll freely admit it got me).

It’s then gloriously assured in grand shots that allow the threats to lurk matter-of-factly into view, a “nun” wielding a double barrel shotgun and the silhouetted frame of Satan himself among the nail bitters.

As Longlegs’ grand scheme finally comes into full focus, with certain elements still skewed to keep the whole affair tilted ever so slightly into the side of surrealism, the devilishly bleak final moments may seem like a cheat.

The devil is in the details, my friends, much like he always has been and always will be.

You’ll continue to hear the empty click of a spent pistol chamber long into the night, and only then will you realize how useless bullets are to pure evil.