‘Longlegs’ can’t match the hype, but it’s still a fright

Maika Monroe’s off-kilter energy and Oz Perkins’s off-putting imagery mix into the spooky smoothie of Longlegs.

As a filmmaker, Oz Perkins has built a career making ambient, dread-inducing chamber pieces, the likes of which draw out suspense from the perpetual unknown. As such, it was a given that Longlegs, his fourth feature, would be at its best at ratcheting up a dreary, disquieting ambiguity. 

A procedural crime-thriller-horror that strives to be akin to the bleak, morose cops-and-criminals movies that populated the ‘90s (which, appropriately, is when this film takes place), Longlegs is effective at sustaining a slow, oozing sense of teetering terror and clammy concern. But when it comes time to reveal what lurks about in the dark, Perkins’s latest can’t help but be unfulfilling — if, perhaps, in terms of delivering on what is otherwise one of this summer’s most intriguing, successful horror films. 

Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), a newly recruited FBI agent who works alongside Agent Carter (Blair Underwood), has an unusual task for a relative newbie to the field: track down an elusive serial killer known solely as Longlegs. Over the past few decades, there’s been a disturbing pattern of murder-suicides linked only by a cryptic series of notes. This undefinable force of vengeance has terrorized the city and left an increasingly murky series of questions in their wake. Through a telekinetic ability to decode Longlegs’s once-unintelligible hand-written notes and cipher through the previously unknown connection between these deaths, Lee can make significant progress in the case and finally bring justice. But it might soon come at a terrible cost: As she digs deeper, Harker learns that this case hits closer to home than she would have thought and she won’t walk away the same woman. 

Oz Perkins, The Thinking Man’s Horror Director? 

At the time of this writing, Longlegs has well eclipsed previous Neon-distributed films, even including Best Picture-winning Parasite, to become the indie company’s highest-grossing movie. There are several factors to accompany this, but the big one comes down to something intrinsically simple: the marketing was really good. And really effective. You recognize the tone (and the vibe) being sold, but you couldn’t make out what exactly was at play here. You could definitely tell that something diabolically spooky was set to happen, and you didn’t need to be a horror fan to want to know what foul play was set in store. 

It’s wild to live in a timeline when Perkins is behind not only a box office darling, but THE surprise smash of the summer. Longlegs has become the little horror movie that could, and that’s no small feat. But as the director of such small-scale creepers as The Blackcoat’s Daughter and Gretel & Hansel, the filmmaker has thrived on making slow, consciously-calibrated films that strived not to fall in line with common jump scare-friendly works. There was often an elegant, refrained quality to them that wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Those who like horror movies with more dread than scares were well served. Longlegs aims to merge the gap between more commercially viable horror-thrillers and Perkins’s in-house style. Though it’s often a successful blend, it loses balance in a third act that has gore and grittiness but doesn’t care about the weighted, weary foreboding that made the first half so gripping.

The Rage of Cage 

At 31 years old, Monroe has found a good niche for herself in the indie horror scene. Between her breakout role in 2014’s It Follows and now, she has excelled in starring roles in The Guest, Watcher, and the off-kilter Greta. Even if those movies didn’t always match the actress’s talents, they were always quick to showcase a young, accomplished actress who knew how to play to her strengths and demonstrate a knack for carrying a tempered, moody silver screen presence.

That’s certainly the case with Longlegs as well. As the socially awkward, yet morally squared Agent Harker, Monroe knows how to make a lot out of a little and how to play into the quirks of this telekinetic character without letting those quirks define her character solely. It’s a thoughtful, tantalizing character that makes you want to learn as much about who she is as a person as you are engaged to learn what is going on with this odd, off-screen murderer. 

But once you get to the titular creep, played by none other than Nicolas Cage, the lure fades a bit and the intrigue balloons begin to deflate. It’s not the actor-producer’s fault. He is someone who can channel unsettlingly demented characters, and his choice to play this part bigger and broader than a viewer might expect has the intended effect of appearing both unsettling and undeniably beguiling. The Oscar-winning actor does stand out in a muted movie like this one.

With that said, Cage is also turned-up maybe 15 percent higher than necessary. When he’s singing off-tune and goofing it up in his grotesquely pancaked make-up, it is easy to see why select audience members might want to laugh at him rather than recoil at his sight. It’s a hammy performance — knowingly so, but sometimes doesn’t feel like the most appropriate for what the film is going for. Or, rather, what Longlegs was the most successful at accomplishing. 

Add in the supernatural reveals, and you get a movie that doesn’t lose itself so much as it loses its wow factor. Unlike, say, The Blair Witch Project, Longlegs can’t keep the ruse for the whole ride. When it feels the need to reveal its hand, you can’t help but wish that it stayed grounded in the vein of David Fincher’s Zodiac. The real world is scary enough. The terror of not knowing will carry more gravitas. You don’t necessarily need to bring the Devil into it. I’m just saying…. 

The bottom line.

It’s easy to see why Longlegs is frightening up a fair bit of moolah at the box office. It’s taunt, tactile filmmaking with a keen eye for atmosphere, tone, and unsettling tension. But for all the movie accomplishes in setting the stage, Longlegs can’t help but fall short of expectations. Still, while it might not rise to the same heights as some of its influences like Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure, it proves that Perkins will continue his family’s legacy of making a lasting and unsettling name for himself in the ever-dreadful world of film horror. 

Longlegs is now playing in theaters everywhere. You can watch the trailer here.

Images courtesy of Neon. You can read more reviews by Will Ashton here.