Longlegs
2024
Director- Oz Perkins
Cast- Maika Monroe, Blair
Underwood, Alicia Witt, Kiernan Shipka, Michelle Choi-Lee, Nicolas Cage
A series
of brutal murders have taken place where entire families have been killed. The
killer has left behind no physical evidence save only a coded message signed “Longlegs.”
Enter onto the scene Special Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe}, a FBI agent with
precognitive psychic abilities.
Her boss
(played by Blair Underwood) is looking for a serial killer but Harker believes.
that there may be some larger conspiracy at work. As Agent Harker delves into
the case, she has visions and flashbacks that indicate that she may have a personal
connection to the killer. She eventually encounters a satanic dollmaker
(Nicolas Cage). As she pushes on with the case, the truth, and the full horror,
is finally revealed to her.
In the publicity
for the movie, Longlegs has been repeatedly compared to Silence of the Lambs,
but other than the protagonist is a female FBI agent, the films have little in
common. Lambs is a very down to earth police procedural. It’s the realism and believability
that gives Lambs its power as a horror movie.
Longlegs,
on the other hand, has obvious supernatural elements, that are present from the
beginning of the film. Its more in the vein of The First Power, Fallen or
Exorcist 3 (though its not nearly as effective as Exorcist 3, few films are).
If you are
familiar with Oz Perkin’s other films, you know he’s good at creating a creepy,
oppressive atmosphere. He also tends to go with ambitious ideas that aren’t necessarily
easy to flesh out in a typical Hollywood movie run time. Perkin’s Gretel and Hansel, for instance, was far more ambitious with its subject matter than what
it was able to achieve. In Longlegs, Harker’s psychic ability, for instance,
isn’t that thoroughly explored.
But
Perkins is able to get really good performances out of actors, and that’s the
best selling point of the film. Maika Monroe is very convincing as the tentative,
often anxious FBI agent whose world starts unraveling just as she unravels more
of the Longlegs mystery. Kudos to whoever thought of casting Blair Underwood. I
guess to me he’s still the character from LA Law, but a quick review of his filmography
shows that he’s had plenty of experience playing this type of character. Alicia
Witt (who played Alia in David Lynch’s Dune) is convincing as Harker’s unhinged
mother. Nicolas Cage is, well, Nicolas Cage.
The most surprising
performance though was Kiernan Shipka as Longleg’s one surviving victim, now
driven insane and living in an asylum. As I watched the film, I kept thinking,
wow she looks familiar, but it wasn’t until after the fact that I realized it
was her. Oz Perkins must really know how to get the best (or maybe worst, as it
were) out of Shipka. She made her horror debut with Perkins at the age of 15 in
The Blackcoat’s Daughter, and she was pretty scary in that.
An
argument could be made that both Longlegs and Blackcoat’s Daughter take place
in the same universe. They both revolve around satanic themes. Both have
similar, albeit brief, depictions of the devil. In both films, the devil’s real
power is in his ability to drive people to do terrible things.
If you are
looking for an occult thriller, Longlegs is worth a trip to theater. If you don’t
get the chance to see it now, it will certainly be worth streaming this spooky
season.
