Movie Review: Longlegs

Horror movies often rely on mood and tone to a much greater degree than other genres do. Atmosphere can go a long way towards putting an audience in the right frame of mind to be scared. In his latest feature, writer / director Osgood Perkins proves himself a master of establishing a grimy, disconcerting feeling right from the opening moments and maintaining it for the entire 101 minute runtime.

Newly recruited FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) demonstrates an unusually strong sense of intuition while performing field work on a case. The Bureau naturally takes interest, tests her to see if she does possess any psychic abilities, and finds that she does seem to be at least slightly gifted. Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) is desperate to solve a decades-old case involving a serial killer who refers to himself as Longlegs (Nicolas Cage), who has managed to murder several families without ever entering their homes, possibly through suggestion alone, and so he recruits Lee to work on it with him. She is quick to put together a lot of pieces that tie the families to each other and suggests there is a pattern to the dates of the killings, while also finding herself being potentially haunted by the killer or an accomplice.

Monroe is perfect at playing the meek and odd agent. It’s clear that she has experienced something traumatic in her past and while she doesn’t remember exactly what it was, the psychic scars it left behind are evident in her off-kilter performance. Her mother (Alicia Witt) has shut down even more, with their phone conversations being stilted and eerie, a sense that is only exacerbated when she finally visits her in person. In his somewhat limited screen time though, Cage delivers the most memorable performance in the movie. He is operating in his fully unhinged mode here and is virtually unrecognizable in his makeup, and the result is one of the most unsettling movie psychos in years.

Perkins and cinematographer Andrés Arochi expertly frame every scene, often placing the characters in the middle of a room shot straight on, making them feel boxed in by their surroundings. There is a gloomy saturation added to the movie that makes it feel almost illicit and combined with Zilgi’s eerie score can contribute to viewers’ sense of unease. Perkins will sometimes let the camera linger on a scene longer than necessary, leading the audience to expect something strange to happen, only to finally move on uneventfully, much like Kubrick does so effectively throughout The Shining. In a seeming nod to another horror classic, The Exorcist, disturbing figures will sometimes slowly emerge in normal places, just out of sight of the characters on screen, letting us know that something truly evil is going on and that no one is ever safe.

This sort of horror movie is not going to be for everyone, but those who are willing to let it seep into their psyche will find it tense, disorienting, and unforgettable. It probably won’t be too challenging for some viewers to figure out what’s really going on, but doing so doesn’t detract from the unease Perkins has set out to inject into his audience. He is a filmmaker that started strong with The Blackcoat’s Daughter and has only been getting better since, and this is easily his best work yet, a disquieting and haunting horror gem. ★★★★★