Longlegs and all the images you see in this review are owned by Neon
Directed by Osgood Perkins
I don’t want to bring up the box office every time I write a review these days, but it seems that the only reliably bankable genres are now kid’s movies and horror films. Horror has always had a leg up in theaters since they are cheap to produce and easy to sell to audiences looking for a thrill, but the genre has had some truly remarkable entries the last few years and I wouldn’t be surprised if it eventually gets enough momentum, both critically and financially, to start getting a few nods from the famously stuffy Academy. Is this latest effort from Osgood Perkins another feather in the genre’s cap, or does this fail to stand out among its bigger and better peers? Let’s find out!!
Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is unassuming and soft-spoken, but she manages to stand out among her peers at the FBI with an uncanny intuition about the murders they are chasing, and while she doesn’t get assigned to the X-Files to be Mulder’s new partner, she does get assigned to a case involving the brutal murder of nearly a dozen families by the enigmatic killer known simply as Longlegs (Nicolas Cage) who always leaves a note but never seems to be there for the crime itself. She starts to connect the dots on a few of the murders which leaves her supervisor Carter (Blair Underwood) both impressed and skeptical, but things take a dark turn when Longlegs contacts her directly with clues that only hasten the investigation but bring her closer to him and whatever mysterious plans he has for her. As the evidence starts to point towards yet another massacre of a family, can Lee uncover the mystery in time to save Longlegs’ next victims from their terrible fate? What is driving this man to kill in such horrific ways, and is there more to this case than what science and evidence can point to? Seriously, who did Lee tick off to get stuck with this weirdo killer? Even Clarice had an easier time on her first assignment!
This is the second Osgood Perkins film I’ve seen, and he definitely has a style that I find both wholly compelling and profoundly frustrating. The surreal is a tricky thing to capture on film, as you have to find a way to engage with an audience’s subconscious feelings without letting their active consciousness work too hard to put it all together. Osgood has proven to be great at the first part, with wonderful visuals and intriguing ideas, but I left both Gretel & Hansel and this movie feeling less than satisfied with what I just sat through. It’s a competently stitched together narrative and our cast of characters is well drawn with Maika Monroe and Blair Underwood carrying most of this on their shoulders, but they’re not occupying a compelling mystery; hardly the stuff of Thomas Harris or even Stieg Larson. There are a few too many obvious clues for the big reveal at the end to carry much weight, and the investigation itself is a prime example of the tail wagging the dog. It’s possible that the themes simply flew over my head, but I didn’t find anything about the investigation that tests Lee as a person or reveals anything about her that’s within the realm of her own agency. Sure, the movie has twists that put her in uncomfortable situations, but those don’t feel like an organic outgrowth of her choices as everything in this investigation is happening to her rather than her being the one to push it forward. Now that kind of helplessness has worked in a lot of horror movies, and it’s a style often seen in Satanic Panic movies like this, but if that’s what they were going for then they needed to lean in much harder into it. There are some creative touches here and there to keep the demonic elements fresh in your mind, but there’s a lack of perverse abandon that left the story feeling too clean, and if you’re not interested in having those kinds of thrills, then why are we invoking Satan in the first place?
Thankfully, the production is good enough to cover for many of the film’s shortcomings. The visuals are fantastic, with an awareness of space that I haven’t seen since The Invisible Man, and it’s impressive how expressive the colors manage to be in such a muted color pallet. The atmosphere is downright suffocating despite the characters having so much empty space to wander around in, and the film remains vague as to how realistic it’s going to be, which leaves you expecting just about anything to hop out of every corner. Nicolas Cage is as fun as he ever is in this role, and while the performance doesn’t feel natural to the world he inhabits, it sticks in your head in the way that the memory of a bad dream will just flash across your mind when you least expect it. Everything that works about this movie is in service to the audience rather than the narrative. The tension felt is not for the precarious wellbeing of the characters but in how creative and frightening the next visual will be; which can make for an exciting experience, but one that can also feel a little hollow.
Nicolas Cage got a lot of heat for a lot of years over the schlocky films he was making, and while the turnaround in public perception has been gratifying to see, I think this could have benefited from a little more cheese. While the intention to blend a grounded detective story with fantastical dream logic was admirable, the end result feels anemic from both ends; lacking the sharp writing and detailed sleuthing of a mystery as well as the grotesqueries and pomposity of a Satanic horror film. There’s enough beautiful imagery and offbeat performances to recommend, but I was hoping that all these left turns into the bizarre would take us off the beaten track rather than right down the middle of the road.
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