Longlegs, NEON’s much-anticipated horror film from Oz Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter, Gretel & Hansel), straddles the line between detective procedural and supernatural haunter with a masterful command for atmosphere and tone. As thematically dark and unforgiving as it is formally constructed and rhythmically precise, Perkins’ nightmarish vision of a satanic doll maker (played with creepy but characteristically over-the-top intensity by Nicolas Cage) and the FBI agent (Maika Monroe) pursuing him is in no rush to reveal its macabre story, demanding patience from viewers in pursuit of a frightful theatrical experience.
Across the span of decades and the vast American West, a disturbing and puzzling pattern emerges. A string of murder-suicides where the family patriarch kills his own family—most commonly with a kitchen knife in extreme acts of brutality—before taking his own life might seem unconnected if not for the birthday card written in cipher left behind by a man calling himself “Longlegs.” Additionally, every family has a daughter whose birthday falls on the 14th of the month. When Monroe’s Agent Lee Harker is brought onto the cold case as a fresh pair of eyes, the investigation takes a sudden turn. Years of clues collate under Harker’s algorithmic intuition, and soon the cold case is red hot. Meanwhile, the eponymous Longlegs initiates direct contact with his pursuer, sending her cryptic messages with an unsettling sense of familiarity.
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The very first shot of Longlegs, captured in era-appropriate Super 8 film to evoke the feel of home video, establishes Perkins’ approach. The horror, for the most part, lurks just out of frame. Characters are haunted by the empty spaces around them while the viewer fills in the margins with their own dark fears. We meet the killer in these opening moments. With his scraggly silver hair and falsetto speaking voice, he reminds one more of Tiny Tim or Michael Jackson than Buffalo Bill, but his impression is equally devilish. Cage induces plenty of chills as the mysterious killer, though the more he’s onscreen, the less menacing his presence becomes. Whether it’s because it’s hard to divorce Cage the (over)actor, even under extreme amounts of facial prosthetics and makeup, from Perkins’ otherwise restrained and haunted vision, or because Longlegs as a character can only drive the movie titled after him so far, it’s unclear. One thing is clear: Longlegs is very much Nic Cage being Nic Cage, for better or worse.
The most terrifying moments of Perkins’ film are discovered through Monroe’s breathy, nervy turn as Lee Harker. Whether she’s isolated in her far-flung log cabin with no one close enough to hear her scream, witnessing the pedestrian everyday horrors of performing her job duties as a female FBI agent, or beset by visions of the sinister (her superior Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) jokes, “It’s better to be half-psychic than not at all”), Monroe makes Longlegs scary. Her reactions, hesitance, and restraint are so expertly dialed in and paced that we echo her terror. Framing the hunt for Longlegs and his occult underpinnings through Harker gives the story dramatic heft, though it does open it up to long bouts of still.
Perkins is no stranger to patience as a cinematic weapon in his arsenal—both The Blackcoat’s Daughter and Gretel & Hansel are more dark tone-poems than plot-driven haunts—and he deploys patience generously here. In moments where Harker and Carter investigate a crime scene, or Longlegs saunters and stews, the silence and waiting take up exponential space. This tactic may beleaguer those wanting more explosiveness or narrative propulsion, but that is not the kind of film Longlegs is. Instead, it simmers, it stews, it reaches under the skin and prickles. That’s not to say that will work for everyone—and I’d be lying if I said that the film is nearly as abjectly scary as it is low-key creepy for its entire duration—but I doubt few will get to the end of Perkins’ sinister saga without feeling at least a bit disturbed by his well-orchestrated eeriness. A reliable gauge of a horror film’s impact is how it infiltrates your dreams; by that measure and by occult-themed nightmares, Longlegs left me deeply unsettled.
CONCLUSION: Oz Perkins delivers another sinister vision of the occult in taut, skin-crawling ‘Longlegs’. Maika Monroe is excellent as a nervy, kinda-clairvoyant FBI agent, while Nicolas Cage creeps as the eponymous killer but is not always an additive force. While never outright terrifying, this deliberately-paced supernatural horror film is dripping with atmosphere and tension.
B+
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By: Matt Oakes
Started blogging about film in college when the university paper wouldn’t have him. Dislikes your consensus film Twitter favorites. Devotee of horror movies that make him die a little inside. Catches films at festivals when he can. Proud SFCS and OFCS member and Tomatometer-approved critic. Editor-in-chief of Silver Screen Riot.
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