In a February 2020 review, I praised director Oz Perkins as the creator of "the world's most contemplative satanic possession movie." That was a reference to one of his earlier films, The Blackcoat's Daughter. The bigger-budget movie I was reviewing, twisted fairy tale Gretel & Hansel, disappeared into the pandemic vortex and did no wonders for Perkins' career.
But now the son of Anthony Perkins — yes, Norman Bates himself — has scored a hit with Longlegs, an indie horror movie that benefits from viral marketing and the Nicolas Cage factor.
After a test reveals that Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) has psychic abilities, her boss (Blair Underwood) puts her on a case that has stymied the Bureau. Seemingly straightforward murder-suicides over a 30-year period have a baffling factor in common: A coded message signed "Longlegs" was left at each scene.
An obsessive worker, Lee sets up her evidence board and quickly discovers more patterns connecting the crimes. Thanks to a message from a mysterious intruder, she decodes Longlegs' cipher — and learns that the next victim could be her own semi-estranged mother (Alicia Witt).
Meanwhile, Longlegs (Cage) does craft projects and creeps out everyone he encounters. We know who he is. What we don't know is how or why he does what he does — or when he'll strike next.
Horror may be the last genre where filmmakers can still profit while indulging their artistic side. As long as they offer something in the way of scares or shock value, fans will accept high levels of weirdness, because everything off-putting is potentially horrifying. For proof, look at audience reaction to Jack Nicholson's mannered performance in The Shining — or Cage's fully unhinged one here.
Longlegs opens with a scene that could be a film-school short. In 4:3 aspect ratio (think old-time TV), a young girl (Lauren Acala) steps out of her home to find a '70s-era woody station wagon in the driveway. The setting is wintry, the colors sparse, the only soundtrack an ominous bird call. Then he appears — a dapperly dressed but clearly unwell fellow, babbling about his "long legs." The framing cuts off half his face, disorienting us further. Is this an intruder? A family friend? The girl's father? Her expression reveals nothing.
Longlegs is at its best when Perkins knocks us off-kilter with scenes such as this one (which ends abruptly, leaving us none the wiser). When the aspect ratio widens again, we're in the 1990s, golden age of procedurals such as The Silence of the Lambs, and the plot becomes a serial-killer hunt with clear parallels to its predecessors. The problem is, that story is nowhere near as original or grotesquely compelling as the flashbacks that interrupt it.
When it comes to composition and other formal elements, everything in Longlegs is masterful and purposeful: the landscapes as stark as monotone etchings, the strategically placed shadows, the match cuts and overhead shots, the creepy log cabin home where Lee never feels safe. Even that bird call from the first scene reappears at just the right moment.
The film's screenplay, however, doesn't live up to the promise of its atmosphere. The stilted dialogue could be a deliberate throwback (though '90s film detectives didn't talk that way), but the underdevelopment of Lee's character is a deeper problem. Monroe, so good in It Follows, has worried eyes and a tight, expressive mouth. Before Lee utters a word, we can see she's hiding things — from us, from her superiors and perhaps even from herself. But she never progresses far beyond these initial clenched, agonized reactions. Even in lighter moments — such as a quasi-comic scene in which Lee chats with her boss' daughter — Lee doesn't relax. If she has long-term goals or pleasures, we don't learn about them.
While hopelessness is par for the course in horror, this is a performance and a character without levels, swamped by the film's doomy occult iconography. Lee is less a person than a device, upstaged by the characters who don't have to feign a semblance of sanity. Perkins wisely keeps Cage off-screen most of the time, so that each of his jarring appearances can be an event. Witt gives a performance layered with dangerous knowledge and guile, harking back to the start of her career as the preternaturally wise Alia in David Lynch's Dune.
The mother-daughter conflict gives the film some resonance, but its supernatural elements ultimately feel more commercial than committed. While Longlegs offers the pleasure of watching a talented artist fire on all cylinders, it never plunges into the realms of genuine faith or anguished skepticism. Like many an occult-themed movie these days, it evokes religious motifs more for their goth aesthetic than anything else — satanic for kicks.
The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015; Cinemax, Kanopy, YouTube Primetime, rentable): Perkins' lower-budget demonic possession movie has a memorably creepy setting: a boarding school in the dead of winter.
I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016; rentable): For this claustrophobic, horror-adjacent concoction about a writer's live-in caregiver whose mental state is fraying, Perkins channeled Shirley Jackson vibes and showcased a riveting performance by Ruth Wilson.
"True Detective," season 1 (2014; Max, rentable): In addition to all the '90s procedurals inspired by Thomas Harris' novels, Longlegs recalls the acclaimed first season of this anthology show, in which Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson play detectives investigating an occult-linked murder.