Film Review: Longlegs

Longlegs
Director: Oz Perkins
Neon, Saturn Films, Oddfellows
In Theaters: 7.12

What is your deepest darkest fear? Does it keep you up at night? Are you a realist scared of home invaders? Or does your imagination wander to boogeymen hiding under your bed, maybe even lurking in your closet? To universally terrify audience members worldwide is no easy feat, even for the most seasoned of directors. In Longlegs, Oz Perkins (Blackcoat’s Daughter, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House) doesn’t necessarily scare you, but he has worked out the formula to successfully unease you to your core and creep out even the most unphased horror aficionados long after his inverted credits roll. 

Following young FBI Agent Lee Harker, played by Gen Z’s scream (or maybe “gasp” is the better word) queen Maika Monroe (It Follows, Significant Others), on the hunt for an occult serial killer whose crimes span over a lengthy 30 years. All crime scenes are staged to look like family annihilations perpetrated by the fathers and show no physical evidence of any outside force at play. The only thing clueing investigators to a serial murderer is encoded messages signed with the name “Longlegs” left at every crime scene. The further Agent Harker looks into the case the more it seems that there’s something, or someone, much larger at work behind these murders. 

Longlegs is the fully realized and masterfully executed Oz Perkins joint we (well, maybe just me) have been anxiously waiting for since The Blackcoat’s Daughter graced our screens 9 years ago, ignore that slip up with I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House. Say what you want to about the blatant similarities to Silence of the Lambs but Perkins writing, even though he’s working overtime with his multiple plots, subplots and glam-rock-satanic-panic references (this is where I side-eye Ryan Murphy), never once feels convoluted and is completely original. It also confidently sticks its landing when it comes to its final moments on screen, something that’s felt foreign to most recent indie/arthouse horror flicks as of late. 

Andres Arochi’s cinematography is also incredibly skilled and finely tuned despite this being his first major feature film. Utilizing different techniques during the film’s hour and forty one minute runtime. Like switching to a 1.33: 1 from 2.35: 1 for certain scenes to different timelines and visions, to using certain lenses to at times isolate viewers and make them feel claustrophobic, then swapping them out to elongate the edges of his frames, giving viewers a mirrored sense of what Agent Harker is feeling.  

Both Monroe and the infamously enigmatic Nicolas Cage, who plays the titular role (and adopts the role as producer behind the scenes), possess your attention from the second they both appear on screen and haunt you long after the film is over. Both are clearly having the time of their lives with the material they’ve been given. While Cage has been known to “go big” in the past, and opinions about his redemption arc have been polarizing, this is one of the performances of his (and our) lifetime, where the “going big” gamble works in his favor. Longlegs is a villain that is sure to hit icon status. All that being said, never once does he overshadow Monroe’s unforgettable sheepish yet intuitive portrayal of Harker. The two work together to create an uncanny type of chemistry that we haven’t seen done this well since Jodi Foster and Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs. 

No movie is perfect, but Longlegs does come close. From last year around the Super Bowl when we got the first of many cryptic, encoded social media ads, to it’s highly anticipated release, to me waking up at four in the morning panicked and feeling someone watching me from the corner of my room, Oz Perkins and his Longlegs have been there waiting to creep into your minds and home long after you leave the theater. —Yonni Uribe

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