Horror has arguably had something of a renaissance in the last fifteen years. Whether it was James Wan’s The Conjuring and its grand-scale ‘haunted house’ perfection, Jennifer Kent’s lullaby-gone-awry with maternal grief in The Babadook, or even the discovery of creative and detail-specific auteurs like Ari Aster, Robert Eggers, and Jordan Peele (Hereditary, The Witch, and GET OUT, respectfully), horror films have generated massive success as both box office darlings and as creative forces that have, at times, kept the industry afloat. Daring, bold stories with genuine human emotion are dyed in the wool of these modern scary stories, these elevated horror films, all deftly mixing every form of evil with familial trauma, modern social issues, and deeply-seated psychological fear. Osgood Perkins’ LONGLEGS not only deservedly joins the list of growing modern horror masterpieces but does so with the refreshing reinvention of the ‘serial killer,’ the police procedural, and the satanic in a claustrophobic presentation that will genuinely disturb (and thrill) average movie-goers and horror junkies alike.
Maika Monroe is FBI agent Lee Harkin, a newly minted field agent, who, on her first field recon task as an agent, witnesses the brutal murder of her partner. Standard investigative thriller plot point…except that what led her and her partner to the house of the very killer they are tracking was Harkin’s ‘guided look’ at a house and then her instinctively heading towards it. Turns out that Agent Harkin is almost savant-like…with a small touch of being psychic. It is this ability to tap into these ‘guided looks,’ along with her intense examination of algorithms and ciphers that she is brought in to investigate a series of mass killings – all families with incredibly specific shared features – that all have handwritten messages at the scene, signed by the name LONGLEGS. As Agent Harkin and her colleagues stumble on yet another LONGLEGS killing, she begins to unravel not only who – and what – LONGLEGS is but a deeper connection to the killer that goes all the way back to her childhood.
Perkins – son of perhaps one of the oldest and most revered cinematic serial killers of all time (gold star to anyone who knows!) – clearly understands the way a horror audience works when anticipating the events of a horror film and understands how to tantalize and terrorize in equal measure. His earlier films (Gretel & Hansel, The Blackcoat’s Daughter) showed audiences he knows his spooky stuff, but with LONGLEGS, Perkins goes full tilt, adding abstraction and atmosphere that go beyond the script he has written. The selected camerawork here is purposeful at all times; set at angles often looking up just below the waist as close-ups, or anchored establishing shots with exaggerated backgrounds that do not track but rotate on the spot, Perkins wants us to feel as if we are somehow stuck in the crime scenes or in small spaces, observing what happens almost like bystanders within the police tape, or even against the walls of the next murder. The key to the atmosphere, this unsettling, claustrophobic feeling, is that the tilted close-ups and awkwardly framed long shots linger too long and just over Agent Harkin’s shoulders or head, drawing the eye line of the audience into the shadows and the open spaces of the background, convincing you something or someone is lurking there off camera. The audience is teased constantly into the idea that the next scare – the next murder – is literally about to happen. It is a gloriously tortuous tactic that makes the looming mystery and threat of LONGLEGS incredibly effective.
A new voice steps out of the darkness - with an impressive lineage to boot - with a film steeped in claustrophobic dread and a bizarrely terrifying Nic Cage.
Speaking of the killer…what can be said about Nic Cage that has not been over the last few years? Since resolving his personal issues a few years ago with ‘Uncle Sam,’ Cage’s roles have gone from taking anything that is going for a paycheck to unique, challenging roles that have offered him the chance to cut loose and explore his self-described ‘kabuki’ approach to acting, making fun of himself in some (The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent) to showcasing raw depth and range (Pig). His LONGLEGS killer is right in the ‘Cage Rage’ sweet spot – over-the-top in moments that teeter on the comically absurd but then violently crashing into an eerily obsession-filled space with placid tones and wide eyes that showcase true insanity. Oscillating between camp madness and profound evil, in carefully staged shots that obscure his face for more than half of the film, Cage’s killer feels like an unpredictable element in a genre filled with tropes too many to count. Cage is truly dangerous here, and committed to it (and clearly loving it). Paired with Monroe’s painfully restrained savant detective, whose forlorn stares and stony speech are clear hallmarks of immensely repressed trauma, the audience is treated to a complex and foreboding procedural that has not been this disturbing since the likes of Se7en or Silence of the Lambs. The ‘hunter and hunted’ game – and the reversal of it – between Cage and Monroe is deliriously dark and intense. It is possible that Cage’s LONGLEGS will enter the horror pantheon as a truly great monster, and Monroe not only cements her status as a scream queen for Gen Z but shows us all she really should be in more things.
There are plot twists aplenty – predictability will vary on the viewer and their love of the genre. To make a list of what is featured in the plot is to almost mislead, as if Perkins made a horror checklist and ensured he hit as many as he could in the process; pentagrams, eerie human dolls, priests, crucifixes, bloody axes… it is all present and accounted for in a satanic serial killer set-up. It is what Perkins does with them – how he connects them all – and connects them back to Harkin that is refreshing, as they all come to a singular revelation that examines what love is, and what the cost of love truly comes to when life and soul may be the currency and that is as much of a spoiler as you may get, dear reader.
Needless to say, all of this comes with grizzly murders, a few well placed jump scares, and that creeping feeling that you are being watched. Perkins knows what scares people, and he knows that those looking to be genuinely scared have the patience and the curiosity – the trust, I would dare say – to be led around all the blood and loud noises towards things that truly make them want to look away, but cannot. The innate fascination with the unknown parts of the human condition – death and divinity – are examined under the satanic elements here, but they also become potent reminders of human complexity; when love itself is the catalyst for the demonic murders conducted here, one is forced to ask how far is too far for love if it means doing harm. Armed with two exceptionally paired performances attuned perfectly to one another and some methodical editing and camera work carrying the hallmarks and standard totems of the genre, Perkins arrives with massive potential for new and innovative scares, and giving us a terrifying glimpse into our own fascination with good and evil.
Final Thought
Nightmare fuel, plain and simple. The first glimpse of Cage as LONGLEGS is a doozy - so see it with as large a crowd as possible for that ‘fright night’ feeling.