Movie Review: LONGLEGS

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: July 12th, 2024 / 03:05 AM

Rating: R
Stars: Maika Monroe, Blair Underwood, Alicia Witt, Nicolas Cage, Michelle Choi-Lee, Lauren Acala, Kiernan Shipka, Ava Kelders, Carmel Amit
Writer: Osgood Perkins|
Director: Osgood Perkins
Distributor: Neon
Release Date: July 12, 2024

LONGLEGS succeeds at being admirably scary, leavened by some very funny moments. Mixing FBI procedural thriller with supernatural chiller, writer/director Osgood Perkins has made a film that feels something like a hybrid of 1991’s THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and 1982’s HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH. (The latter isn’t a spot-on comparison, but it’s close as far as the magical mechanisms.)

We get quite a jolt in the prologue, when a little girl (Lauren Acala), dressed in bright colors, wanders outside her house into a snowy landscape so desaturated it could be black and white. Here we meet Longlegs (Nicolas Cage, almost unrecognizable under prosthetic makeup).

After this, LONGLEGS is divided into three chapters (as the title of the last one is a bit of a spoiler, we won’t list them here). We’re now in the ‘90s, during the Clinton presidency. Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is a newish FBI field agent with a talent for correct hunches. Her supervisor, Agent Carter (Blair Underwood), is refreshingly non-skeptical about these things, and in fact has Lee take a test for psychic abilities.

Lee turns out to be not quite psychic, but she’s gifted, and Carter reckons that’s good enough to put her on the task force of a puzzling serial case.

In each of a series of family annihilations, a middle-class husband/father murders his wife and children, then commits suicide. In all of these killings, letters that mostly consist of strange symbols, signed “Longlegs,” have been found on site. Also present: lifelike, life-sized doll replicas of the families’ girl child. But there is no evidence that Longlegs was ever in the houses. So, how is this happening?

People familiar with a certain horror subgenre will get to the correct answer faster than the characters, but Perkins makes it all entertainingly creepy. He also has a few moments that manage to be truly disturbing on a more realistic level.

This is at least one giant forensics “wait a minute” when we find out what’s going on; if it’s addressed at all, the reviewer missed it. Otherwise, LONGLEGS moves along artfully and suspensefully, maintaining the ability to shock even when we know what must be coming in a given moment.

Monroe makes us believe in both Lee’s strengths and self-doubts, and Underwood plays Carter the kind of boss/colleague everyone would like to have. Alicia Witt has melancholy impact playing two different age ranges – in flashbacks and in the ‘90s – as Lee’s mother.

There is a suggestion that Longlegs (the character, as opposed to actor Cage) is wearing prosthetics. This leads to another “well, then why …” set of questions. What we don’t doubt is that Cage is having a blast as a man who answers to no one in terms of morality, behavior, or self-presentation. No other actor could or would give this performance, and it has the intended unnerving effect.

LONGLEGS has a couple of glitches, but it is mostly a satisfying and distinctive horror film.

Follow us on Twitter at ASSIGNMENT X
Like us on Facebook at ASSIGNMENT X

Latest Buzz

A satisfying and distinctive horror film with Nicolas Cage getting his creep on

Article Source: Assignment X
Article: Movie Review: LONGLEGS

Related

Related Posts:

Leave a Comment

Assignment X Poll

Newsletter subscription status