An FBI agent must track down a supernatural serial killer who has ties to her own past in Longlegs, which opens in Prague cinemas this weekend after debuting to rave reviews stateside last month. This supremely creepy effort from director Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter) boasts a solid lead turn from the always-good Maika Monroe and a deliciously unhinged performance from Nicolas Cage, but the largely artificial presentation prevents the film from scoring on the level of a truly great thriller.
That’s okay, though, because a Hollywood-style thriller is not what’s on the menu. Longlegs has been billed as one of the scariest movies of the year, and while that description isn’t likely to sit well with the Blumhouse crowd looking for the jump scares of Night Swim or Imaginary, this slow-burn horror truly does get under your skin, and will leave you squirming long after the credits have rolled.
Set in Oregon in the mid-1990s (a portrait of Bill Clinton notably dominates the regional FBI headquarters), Longlegs stars Monroe as FBI agent Lee Harker, who is investigating a mysterious series of murders that have occurred in the Pacific northwest over two decades. The victims are all families, and the perpetrator seems to be the patriarch, but the agency has been receiving Zodiac-style letters claiming responsibility from a killer who identifies themselves as “Longlegs.”
Harker displays fringe psychic abilities to go along with undiagnosed autism, and as she investigates the murders she discovers a potential connection to her own past, as mom Ruth (Alicia Witt) reported a disturbing encounter to police when Lee was a young girl. The encounter is depicted in Longlegs‘ unbearably tense opening scene, in which the killer is only seen from the neck down.
Nicolas Cage only has a few scenes in Longlegs as that mysterious titular character, a dollmaker and genuine weirdo with pale skin and white hair; in visual terms, he’s the ghost of glam rockers like T. Rex’s Marc Bolan, whose quoted lyrics open the film. But he makes the biggest impact here as a Hannibal Lecter who has nothing but terror to offer our protagonist.
One of Longlegs‘ most memorable scenes is a visit to the hardware store that is entirely uneventful apart from the appearance of Cage’s character and his helpless attempt at social interaction, which nicely parallels Harker’s lead. We later see him freaking out over the reaction he got from a nonplussed teenage cashier, and there’s something frighteningly relatable to this as motivation for a series of Satanic murders.
Of course, there’s a lot more going in Longlegs, which focused on Harker breaking the code to the murders, which has something to do with specific dates following the birthday of the daughters of the families involved in the homicides. And waitaminute… doesn’t the daughter of Harker’s boss Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) have a birthday coming up?
Longlegs might be described as The Silence of the Lambs as directed by Wes Anderson; Perkins has his own distinctive style, but it is still one of picture-perfect framing, awkward line delivery, and aspect ratio change-ups. But Anderson’s movies are filled with oddball characters that truly inhabit their own weird world; Longlegs features real-world characterizations and a narrative that seem to come from ours.
There’s a lack of in-your-face scares for the casual horror crowd (though the intro, and a later scene at Harker’s cabin, will jolt you out of your seat), and the detective story is too silly for even Thomas Harris fans. But Perkins is interested in exploring other things, deeper below the surface, and the creep-out factor in Longlegs is high enough to warrant a strong recommendation. This is one you won’t easily forget.
