First and foremost, we need to hand it to the marketing team at NEON. One of the most effective marketing campaigns in years, NEON expertly rolled out a consistent string of mysterious marketing methods that amped up anticipation without ever revealing too much. Even after months of cryptic messages, haunting posters, and a working phone number where you could hear a message from Longegs himself, fans still knew next to nothing about the film. THIS is how you make your trailers and teasers; give us just enough to want to check out your film without giving away the entire plot. Hollywood could learn a thing or two from the “Longlegs” marketing, namely that we will go see your movie without showing us the entirety of said cinema in a 2 minute trailer with every new release. Regardless of how you fall on the film after you initially see it, it worked overtime to get butts in seats to great success.
The marketing is important to understanding “Longlegs” because it leads to the second part of its effective but somewhat disappointing campaigns in the early reactions and reviews. This is a really difficult film to talk about without spoiling. It is a film that begs to be discussed, and in turn forces people who can’t actually talk about it to begin making hyperbolic and overpraised statements. I don’t fault them for it, either. How do you describe a film that leaves you shook and changed but for reasons you can’t say to someone who hasn’t seen it yet? How do you talk about its unsettling atmosphere and haunting imagery and relentless tension and constant state of dread without talking about the specifics that created those feelings? It inadvertently breeds misclassification here, with early viewers making statements like “The scariest movie the year” because they are unable to unpack the more nuanced and visceral responses they experienced until they can actually hash out the details with others.
No, “Longlegs” is not the scariest movie of the year. It’s not even the best horror film of the year. Hell, I wouldn’t even consider it a horror movie. It is a 90s crime procedural imbued with a psychological thriller that only sometimes borrows elements from the horror genre. It is important to not only taper your expectations but completely realign them. Without getting into spoilers – which I will work very hard to avoid here – you’re best served by eliminating “horror” from your idea of what this is entirely. Think less “Sinister” or “Insidious,” and more “Se7en” and “Zodiac.” That’s not to say that the film doesn’t live up to some of its hype, just that its hype is misplaced due to the nature with which people were able to describe their experience to people that weren’t able to share it with them. It heavily relies on tension and atmosphere, operating with a disorienting mileu and meticulous framing to create a slow burn, unflinching and disquieting experience that creeps into the darkest recesses of your mind and never gives you a chance to breath.
I saw “Longlegs” in a sold-out crowd on a Thursday night, and you could hear a pin drop from the opening scene to the final shot. No phones, no whispering, no shouting, no bathroom breaks. An entire theater sat in near silence, enraptured in the engrossing haunts and unsettling narrative that you could tell they couldn’t quite grasp but couldn’t look away from. That is incredibly hard to capture in a quick pull quote, and probably oversells it in the same veins as the very praises I’m trying to recontextualize. But it is what makes this film so unnerving and so divisive. It is far more nuanced and patient than in your face violent (though its spurts of violence are extreme and unforgettable) relying on its performances and subtle deconstruction of serial killer idolization to be effective. The influences of David Fincher are all over “Longlegs,” intentional or not. Every single frame is so meticulously crafted with immaculate production design and near perfect symmetry you’d think Fincher himself was on set critiquing every image. Whatever serial killer film in Fincher’s filmography you can think of, writer and director Ozgood Perkins (grandson of “Psycho” star Anthony Perkins) has injected bits and pieces of them into “Longlegs.”
But Perkins smartly reaches different conclusions with each of these inclusions, acting an as antithesis to Fincher as opposed to an homage driven copycat. It has the letters of “Zodiac” but they ultimately amount to nothing of significance. It has the longevity of crimes with religious overtones of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” but shift to become something more meaningful and darker within the subtext. It has the elusive, higher purpose serial killer with the tit for tat interrogation of “Se7en,” but Longlegs is NOT John Doe and they couldn’t be more different in their quests and calling for killing. “Longlegs” invites you in with the familiarity of our own true crime obsessions and serial killer hero worship (I said what I said) and completely flips it all on its head, pointing the finger back at us in shame for ever thinking these are things or people we should cherish and pedestal. For the first time in a long time, “Longlegs” is something borrowed, something new, a film that gets under your skin in ways you didn’t know it could until its too late and find yourself still haunted by it days later.
Perkins directs with exceptional confidence, aligning his auteur vision with tightly wound, controlled sense of imagery and storytelling. Whether “Longlegs” ultimately works for everyone is secondary to the more perfected craft Perkins brings to this latest project. You can see him coming into his own with every frame, exercising an incredible talent to bring exactly what is in his head to the screen and putting complex pieces together in a terrifying puzzle of ever shifting themes. Of course, none of this would be possible without the stellar cast, all of whom are operating at the peak of their powers. Maika Monroe is quietly becoming the ultimate scream queen, stacking a resume of these kinds of fringe thrillers and tapping into different aspects of horror/thriller protagonists.
Here, she plays rookie FBI agent Lee Harper, a socially awkward detective with a knack for detail and deep understanding of the decades long spree of the Longlegs case. The cases are a series of family murders in which the father murders his family and then himself. No forced entry or fingerprints or even a inking that Longlegs was ever there outside of his indecipherable letters, the cases have left the FBI baffled. With an intuition that even Harper can’t explain, she is able to begin uncovering details and clues that start to point the department in the right direction, and edge them closer and closer to actually solving their case and catching their man. But the more she uncovers, the more she begins to realize her own connections to the case, and sets her on a path that will only reveal more and more darkness and alter everything she is the closer she gets to the truth.
The titular villain Longlegs is played by an unrecognizable Nicolas Cage, who is just firing on all cylinders in an absolutely unhinged performance. Perkins knows what and who he has at his disposal, and smartly uses Cage’s screen time in “Longlegs” sparingly. He is patient with his full reveal, and we don’t actually see Cage in all his haunting glory until about an hour into the film. You get just enough to be creeped the hell out, but never too much that you start to search for the Cage under the monster he’s portraying. Like mosts things in “Longlegs,” his performance is sure to be divisive, with some finding it what nightmares are made of while others outright laughing at how ridiculous it looks. Both are right, and both have a place in what Perkins is trying to accomplish with his villain. You know I love Cage, so seeing him push the limits of his talents and go for it like he does here is 100% coded for my cinematic sensibilities. Blair Underwood plays Harper’s superior, and turns in a terrific performance that harkens back to his 90s TV run in “LA Law” and feels completely of the world created around him.
Last but not least is Alicia Witt (“Dune“ 1984) as Harper’s lonely and somewhat estranged mother. Witt has always been a solid performer, but her work in “Longlegs” is unlike anything you’ve ever seen her do so far. She is captivating even with her limited screen time, and what she does here is a career-defining performance in a career of strong performances. “Longlegs” is a film that can easily fall apart in less capable hands both behind and in front of the camera. Hell, even newcomer cinematographer Andrés Arochi feels like a seasoned professional pulled straight from a Fincher or Jordan Peele set, imbuing every shot with the necessary atmosphere for “Longlegs” to be effective. Even if you leave disappointed or let down by overhyped expectations, the craft of this film is undeniable. Everything from the direction to the cinematography to the production design to the performances are so in sync that any misgivings about the overall narrative of “Longlegs” feels secondary.
I don’t even know if everything in “Longlegs” worked for me, and if you’re left pondering the plot more than the experience, you’re bound to find yourself scratching your head as to whether or not it all makes sense. But making sense isn’t what Perkins is trying to accomplish, and that becomes abundantly clear the longer “Longlegs” goes on. This is not a payoff movie despite having some solid twists that alter the entire messaging of the movie. This is not a movie where every puzzle piece creates a perfect bigger picture. No, “Longlegs” is a puzzle made up of pieces from different boxes, but all of them purposefully selected to create a melting pot of ideas that boil down to unexpected themes that only come to light the darker things get. It is not a film you solve in one sitting, nor it is one you forget immediately after. If you go in with the right expectations and let it wash over you with its true intentionality, “Longlegs” will leave you sitting in the dark trying to makes sense of things that may or may not make sense, and then ask you to talk it out with others to try and put your finger on what just happened and why you feel the way you do.
Then, days later, the deep rooted terror of darkness in all things and inescapable images creep back up and you begin to realize that “Longlegs” has you in its grasped forever.
Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars
“Longlegs” is now playing in theaters. You can watch the trailer below.
