When you think of the scariest films you’ve ever seen, what is it about them that truly scares you? Is it the immediate fear of being gutted by a silent, masked killer? Is it the ethereal impermanence of a ghostly specter? Is it jumpscares? Fear of the unknown? Or is it the fear of not having control of something? The subtleties in the reasons people find things personally scary could be as unique as the fingerprints on the hands of those asked. I also believe that this uniqueness extends to those who write and direct the horror films we come to fear, as the horror of John Carpenter (The Thing) will provide someone with a specific type of fear that a film by James Wan (Malignant) won’t, and the same could be said of the work of Ari Aster (Hereditary) or Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street). Every filmmaker in the genre approaches scaring audiences with different things that can jolt, haunt, or unnerve in their own ways.
Maika Monroe as FBI Special Agent Lee Harker in Osgood Perkins’ LONGLEGS. Photo courtesy of NEON.
While Longlegs is his fourth feature film and first to really gain the eye of the ever-powerful entity that is Film Twitter, Osgood “Oz” Perkins has been crafting his own slow and maddeningly moody brand of horror since 2015’s excellent The Blackcoat’s Daughter, and follow-ups I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016) and Gretel & Hansel (2020). The thing that sets Perkins apart is the absolutely oppressive atmosphere and horrendous vibes that his films give off. It’s not so much that I’m scared of what might come next as much as I am simply desperate to rid myself of the dark energy of the world I’ve been placed in as a viewer. Perkins crafts my fingerprint: being constrained in a situation that I am forbidden to leave. Longlegs would not let me leave, and Longlegs will not leave me for a long, long time.
L-R: Lauren Acala as Lee Harker and Alicia Witt as Ruth Harker in Osgood Perkins’ LONGLEGS. Photo courtesy of NEON.
Oregon, the 1990s. FBI Special Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), after displaying rock solid intuition on a previous murder case, is taken in by her superior, Carter (Blair Underwood), and thrust upon the unbreakable case that has plagued their small Oregon town for decades: The Longlegs Killer (Nicolas Cage). Longlegs’s involvement in the crimes is unknown as the only leads are a series of coded messages left at the homes of brutal family murder-suicides by the fathers of little girls born on the 14th of the month. As Harker’s unique intuition opens up doors yet unopened in the case, she faces the looming inevitability of coming face-to-face with the elusive killer and the insidious powers that be fueling the murders.
The marketing for Longlegs has rightly played its hand close to the chest, beginning half-a-year ago with a series of cryptic viral teasers that gave audiences little-to-no information about the film apart from deciphering a code and sitting with the brutally uneasy tone that each teaser brought with it. While it didn’t take netizens long to decipher what the teasers were alluding to, even as the final marketing campaign for Longlegs kicked into full gear, little else was revealed beyond the basic plot and a few teasing scenes of its ensuing horror. We were never even treated to a look at Nicolas Cage (Mandy) in the film, which, rather fittingly, isn’t some Earth-shaking reveal when we’re actually treated to it, but rather something that heightens the already rancid vibe that the film carries with it. There isn’t one moment, one shocking scare, one jarring act of violence, or one image seared into our brain that defines Longlegs, but rather an aching, dreadful pit in your stomach from the moment the film starts to the moment the credits end, and beyond. It’s the type of prolonged horror found in the pages of the bleakest horror novels, and to have captured that dread in a cinematic medium is particularly beautiful in its own twisted way.
Longlegs has gotten a lot of comparisons to Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991), which can admittedly be seen, particularly in the ragged, uneasy nature of its very existence. However, Longlegs seeks to do something very different as the film unfolds its wicked web to the audience, with its unique melding of different genres that create some sort of police thriller/supernatural horror that feels like a hybrid mutant straight out of The Fly (1958; 1986), yet the horrifying creature we’re faced with is one that forms itself into the thing that makes Longlegs glorious horror. The uglier and less of-Earth that Longlegs feels, the more its existence feels like something special. The less that it feels like Longlegs has a soul, the more that I revel in its horrid nature. I find myself so rarely shaken by the offerings of modern horror that finding something that truly, utterly unnerves me as I sit in the warm light of my lamps, alone in complete silence is a feeling I cherish dearly, as it’s something I envy in those who find themselves scared by any horror film.
While Cage is heavily alluded to in its marketing because … well … it’s Nicolas Cage, and naturally, his performance is the flashiest and most daring of anyone’s in the film by a longshot, this is first and foremost the Maika Monroe (It Follows) show, and her Type-A, tic-ridden, savant FBI Agent carries Longlegs with a tortured sense of dread that I often sit back and wonder … why wasn’t Maika Monroe literally everywhere after It Follows (2014)? And why are so many people going to have to re-discover her in this film? What took so long? The ease with which she carries the vast majority of Longlegs on her capable shoulders is toe-to-toe with the most talented of today’s It Girls, and I desperately hope the world doesn’t miss the window this time around to induct her into that club which she has belonged in for nearly a decade now.
Blair Underwood as FBI Special Agent Carter in Osgood Perkins’ LONGLEGS. Photo courtesy of NEON.
There’s something so indescribably sterile and just … generally devoid in the way that Perkins has shot the film with cinematographer Andrés Arochi (Pacifico: Beer from the Pacific) — devoid of heart, soul, or anything even remotely considered humane. There’s an alien nature to the look of the film, never once feeling anything less than a little off. It’s pervasively macabre, but never obvious, and in that uncanniness is where the film’s melding of genres gets to take shape in the unique way that it does. Don’t get things twisted, Longlegs is a horror film first and foremost, and despite whatever skeleton of a police thriller might make up the base of the film, the immediate queasy feeling that the film gives you in its unearthly atmosphere brings this right back squarely into horror, even if you can’t tell yet.
Maika Monroe as FBI Special Agent Lee Harker in Osgood Perkins’ LONGLEGS. Photo courtesy of NEON.
The inevitable backlash to early press of Longlegs has begun, and the “It’s not that scary!” crowds which merely possess a different fingerprint for “scary” have become heard. Truth be told, if after his previous three films, an Osgood Perkins joint didn’t elicit polarized reactions on what is and isn’t considered “scary” in a horror film, I would’ve lost faith in his abilities as a filmmaker. In my fingerprint, Longlegs is the refinement of Perkins’s exercise in style that, while done well in his sophomore and junior features, never quite hit the heights of the eerily bleak The Blackcoat’s Daughter. This is the final form I sought from Perkins so desperately after that first feature, and to see that talent finally be so earnestly fostered and appreciated is about as good of a feeling I can muster from how terrible the rest of Longlegs makes you feel.
In theaters July 12th, 2024.
For more information, head to the official NEON Longlegs website.
Final Score: 5 out of 5.
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Categories: Films To Watch, In Theaters, Recommendation, Reviews
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