A Reel Review: LONGLEGS

As this Blogger has said many times in the past, horror movies can be hard to digest for many reasons. Not only can they be too scary, but they also ask us to bite into a lot; ghosts, goblins, lumbering guys with knives and chainsaws, and fantastical creatures from the depths. None of these elemental horror tropes make sense in the real world, so we have to just go with the flow when they arrive the big screen. LONGLEGS is no different, but it does ask us to swallow a little bit more…

 

FBI Agent Harker (Maika Monroe), who is described as “highly intuitive” (or half-psychic), is recruited by her boss Agent Carter (Blair Underwood), to use her gifts to solve the case of Longlegs (Nicolas Cage), a mysterious serial killer who has been active for decades. 

 

Directed by Osgood Perkins, LONGLEGS shows no shame in taking inspiration from previous horror films that have tracked serial killers; the shadows of SE7EN, ZODIAC, RED DRAGON, and the granddaddy of them all, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, are all over it. But LONGLEGS smartly, and steadily makes this chase all its own. Once Harker is on the case, she finds herself as a catalyst for more Longlegs killings, which leads back to her own family history and her mom (Alicia Witt). There are twists and turns aplenty, and there is never a predictable moment. 

 

Keeping things fascinating is the presentation. Harker spends time solving cryptic messages left behind by Longlegs which reveals satanic emblems. Director Osgood Perkins takes advantage of this, and sneakily shoots his film in angles and triangles. Some of these shapes point upwards, and some down…with the downward angles referencing “the man downstairs”, as Longlegs refers to the devil. Perkins also switches screen-formats; with the boxed-in 16mm film format for flashbacks and then widescreen for present day. The time-setting of the 1990’s helps the plot; there are no iPhones available for Agents to Google their way out of a predicament. 

 

The predicaments the characters find themselves in raises the tension in LONGLEGS. Perkins builds a great sense of anxiety in every scene which is sure to make people squirm. Characters are incredibly well-rounded and feel real. Pacing is brisk yet the film serves as a slow burn. The scares are perfectly timed. 

 

Acting is tremendous. Maika Monroe is amazing in bringing across her intelligent, socially-awkward character. Blair Underwood and Alicia Witt are also very good. The show belongs to Nic Cage and his ghostly-white, scraggly-haired troll of man who is chilling in every way. He has never been more unsettling to look at.  

 

Most of LONGLEGS crawls along as an FBI procedural with a good amount of creeps, and then the third act comes along which really goes nuts. It asks us to swallow a lot, but for the purposes of this story it works…and its best to just run with it. It’s a large bite to take, and the big and final reveal could be taken as a shortcut…but it’s certainly no dealbreaker. By the time it’s all over we will be staggering out of the theatre on shaky legs. 

 

BOTTOM LINE: See it