‘Longlegs’ Review: Osgood Perkins’ Homage-Cloaked Horror Sometimes Spooks but Mostly Hides Original Ideas in the Shadows

Horror movies have increasingly felt the need to be bigger, badder, and bloodier over time, outdoing their predecessors by filling audiences with even more unimaginable disgust and fear. Nightmares of haunting visions come to life, final girls escape by the narrowest of margins, beasts and ghosts creep in the shadows waiting to strike. Yet, the genre has also become deeply self-referential in hopes of fortifying its signature tropes and honoring the wealth of imaginaries that came before. Films that emerged in the 1920’s, like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu, became the blueprint throughout the following decades for those that experimented with suspense, gore, jump scares, and plot twists. Villains and monsters continue to evolve by compensating for an era’s vulnerabilities, leading to a more debilitating universal sense of dread. The latest film to attempt to achieve all of these qualifications is Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs, an ominous yet overstretched procedural of an unsolved FBI serial killer case that traps itself in a web of its own favorite horror classics.

Even though it both leaves little to the imagination and leaves you wanting more, the entire production has plenty of merits. NEON, the film’s distributor, embarked on one of the most impressive marketing campaigns of late almost six months ago, sharing plenty of hints, including a website detailing the victims’ cases- complete with ciphers, encrypted files, and poems- multiple teaser trailers and posters, and even a full-page coded ad in The Seattle Times, reminiscent of the Zodiac Killer. This masterful and exciting release has made waiting for the actual film as unbearable as the summer heat and hopefully isn’t just a one and done adventure. The cryptic details allude to the set of occult clues Agent Harker (Maika Monroe), another fitting allusion to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, has to follow in order to solve the case of the gruesome, decades-long series of murders perpetrated by Longlegs. And the sly homages to Perkins’ father, the legendary Anthony Perkins, and his most notable role in Psycho don’t go unnoticed. One decoded message reads, “I would not hurt a fly,” while the film itself starts with an eerie shot of a house that more than resembles the perilous manor behind the deadly Bates Motel. 

No second is wasted in trying to make your skin crawl. The gritty polaroid-like framing at the outset adds an unnerving sense of claustrophobia as the color bleeds from a blinding crimson to the sterile, “immaculate white” snow-covered yard. Instant dread sets in when Longlegs (Nicolas Cage) is seen stalking the house in his station wagon and, a split second later, luring the nine-year-old girl who lives there outside. The full reveal of his nightmarish appearance doesn’t come until later, but his wispy, gray hair; powdered face, unnaturally red lips, and spookily feminine voice are plenty nauseating in short flashes. When the film transitions to the present day with Harker at the FBI office, the frame slowly widens, flooding the screen with foreboding atmospheric detail. (If you’re lucky, you’ll catch one of the 35mm screenings while it’s in theaters.) The slow-moving camera mirrors Perkins’ slow burn style, full of ominous sounds and eerily shadowed spaces. Wide shots consistently frame the characters leaving them exposed to their surroundings. An undeniable visual cue links Harker, a new recruit hailed as “half psychic,” to Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs as the sole female in a sea of male agents. Her mysterious intuition mixed with Monroe’s cautious prowess, reminiscent of her stirring breakthrough performance in It Follows, not only alienates her, but it’s also what drives most of the film’s intrigue. 

In joining the Longlegs case, she works with her boss, Agent Carter, played deftly by Blair Underwood, to hunt down the resurfaced killer. All of his victims, seemingly happy, “god-fearing, upstanding” families with young daughters, are found to end in gory murder-suicides committed by the father. Some are spattered with satanic imagery, while all are left with coded letters that Harker quickly solves. These messages lead them down a twisted path to other clues and locations more peculiar than the last. The religious and supernatural evidence they uncover helps explain the ideology behind Longlegs’ broad motives but ultimately feels too convoluted to muster any cathartic or terrifying reaction, likewise with the lack of information shared. One of the teaser poster’s decoded messages reads, “Behold Hanbi,” a reference to the father of Pazuzu, the mythical demon who possessed Regan in The Exorcist. Since the film doesn’t explicitly dictate this connection or rather expects a previous understanding, it makes the rabbit hole of teased documents (and an avid knowledge of demonology) seem more like a prerequisite to its viewing. Ultimately, this causes the third act to stumble in a jarring bout of whiplash. The innumerable riddles pile up and only start to make sense after a sudden outburst of exposition. The reveals, given the mystifying information, lead to a disappointingly predictable and concrete finale.

What the screenplay lacks in balance and payoff, the film makes up for in exceptional performances. Cage’s eclectic acting choices make this diabolical performance a fitting addition to his oeuvre. He completely disappears behind the unsettling, thick prosthetics that have both the appearance of worn leather and fine porcelain. Though intentionally on screen for a fraction of the runtime, his omnipresent, satanic aura has you constantly on edge in fear of when he’ll turn up next. Scream queen Kiernan Shipka makes a brief appearance as Carrie Anne Camera, Longlegs’ only survivor, and she channels even more repressed angst than her role in Perkins’ feature debut, The Blackcoat’s Daughter. She feels less like a key to unlocking the film than a way for Perkins to show his love for Carrie, a film with a similar maternal religious fanatic that loves to pray (who doesn’t love Piper Laurie’s audacious performance!). Here though, Alicia Witt uses a more demure approach with Ruth Harker to highlight their somewhat estranged mother-daughter relationship. She is clearly concerned for Lee’s well-being given her dangerous FBI job, but her unusual demeanor makes a simple phone call, where she once again reminds Lee to say her prayers, seem more compulsory than caring.

Longlegs isn’t the radical horror amalgamation it hyped itself to be, but Perkins does prove that his vision is an alluring, fresh perspective in the making. He has orchestrated a full-fledged horror experience despite an underwhelming amount of notable scares and an unchallenging narrative. The twists and brooding mood provide some excitement, but allow little room for the rest of the movie to flourish. Perkins, well-versed in the history of horror films, continues to direct exceptional performances with Cage and Monroe as clear highlights from the film. And like his predecessors, he surely has his sights on the horizon, already concocting new cursed tales and ways to expand the ever-changing genre.

Grade: B-

NEON will release Longlegs only in theaters on July 12.