Longlegs

 

Hell, Oh Doll Lee

Longlegs
Directed by Osgood Perkins
Canada/USA 2024
Black Bear
UK cinema cut.

Warning: Some slight spoilers.

Set in 1995, Longlegs is the latest film written and directed by Oz Perkins, who is the son of Anthony Perkins (yeah, that’s right, he’s Norman Bates son... a role he played on film too as young Norman in Psycho II). And I think this is only the second film I’ve seen by him. I saw February (aka The Blackcoat’s Daughter) a couple of years ago and wrote a review at the time, which still hasn’t seen the light of day on this blog but it is coming, honest. This is what happens when you write faster than you can publish... I have over 240 written reviews waiting in the wings, as it were, at this point (score a big plus to the paranoia of the ‘what if I’m ill one week... need to write a few to keep in hand’ mentality).

Now this one I didn’t know he was connected to until a few days after I saw the trailer. All I know is, the trailer was a rare and completely unsettling two and a bit minutes and, I have to say, most of the film is exactly like this. I do have a problem with this film’s third act but I’ll get to it in a minute.

The Longlegs of the title is a kind of deranged/supernatural serial killer of sorts (although he doesn’t actually do the killing himself... I’ll get to that) played by Nicolas Cage and, honestly, the make-up he’s in for the film is so good, if I didn’t know it was Cage then I wouldn’t have guessed. And the main protagonist of the movie is  FBI Special Agent Lee Harker, as played by Maika Monroe, who was so good in movies like The Guest (reviewed here) and It Follows (reviewed here).

Now it’s set up early on that Harker has special, pretty much psychic powers which give a certain insight as to the suspects she is after. And so she’s handed the case of a series of killings which have been going on since the late 1960s, where the fathers of each family have killed all of them and then taken their own lives. But strange notes and symbols are left by a person at the scene of each one, tying these seemingly unrelated blood baths together.

And it’s a quite good movie. The intensity and chaos of the movie is, pretty much, as it plays in the trailer. It’s also fairly inventive and I think could have also been sustained as a mini series in terms of the amount of intrigue and plot twists it offers up as things unfold. Especially in regards to Harper’s own connection to the case, which I’m guessing the audience will realise a lot quicker than her character does. There is a genuine sense of creeping dread pervading the film and, Cage’s deranged performance as the rarely seen Longlegs is just the cherry on top.  

But the person who really carries this movie is Maika Monroe. She plays the character as a very muffled, reclusive type, almost like she’s got a high level of autism to her make up... and she does it very well. And the reason she is like this throughout the film is explained towards the end and makes perfect sense... and when I say explained, I mean shown to us via a gunshot to a doll’s head, which ushers in unconsciousness for a while... but that’s all I’m saying about that.

For me though, the third act where everything pulls together and the story elements are explained, seemed a bit of a cop out. The identity of a certain other individual that Harper is also looking for is pretty obvious by about halfway through the film (or it seemed like it to me, anyway) and it all just felt a bit overly complicated and overwrought in terms of the supernatural element involved (yeah, this isn’t a serial killer thriller... it’s a proper horror film for sure). So... I have to say that, for me, all the incredible build up went down with a bit of a damp squib of a last 20 minutes or so. That being said, though, the explanations for everything that does go down at least seem to make a certain logical sense and, yeah, to me the writing of this element felt very much like the kind of straight-to-video-rental movies of the 1980s in terms of building up something which, if enough people rented it, could be expanded into a franchise. So it does at least live up to it’s own premise... I can’t fault it for that.

And yeah, at the end of the day and despite the end reel, I must say I really enjoyed Longlegs. It is predictable in places but it’s also incredibly chilling and suspenseful and so, yeah, if you’re a horror movie fan, I’d say this one is definitely worth taking a look at. And I’d even advise checking out the trailer to this one to get a full flavour of it before you go. Despite my reaction to the denouement, I think a lot of people are going to like this one and, perhaps, at least half the audience might not see the end reveals coming. So catch it at some point, is what I say.