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.

Reality

Bites

Reality
USA 2023
Directed by Tina Sutter
Vertigo Films

Warning: I guess if you don’t know the real life events behind this one, as I certainly didn’t, then technically this review does have spoilers.

“The FBI documented the following events with an audio recorder.
The dialogue in this movie is taken entirely from the transcript of that recording.”
From Reality

It’s been said that drama is no better manifested than in real life. I’m not 100% sure about that myself. I think drama is very much a fashioned/crafted art form trying to capture the compelling tension of everyday life, even if the events being written and performed are not based on a true incident. Reality, is based on a true incident... and it’s also based on a play ‘written’ by this film’s director (who also co-wrote the script). I put written in inverted commas because, the way a play or a film is staged, performed and, in the case of a movie, shot and edited (amongst other things) is the art which informs the drama, so to speak.

So the original play was called Is This A Room? And it’s based on an FBI audio transcript, lasting just under an hour and a half, on the real life events of the questioning in her home and, subsequent arrest, of ex-military translator and former intelligence specialist Reality Winner in 2017. And when I say based on, I mean the dialogue script and running time of the film is verbatim from those recordings. Although they are not the actual recordings heard themselves... the actors in this one just speak the lines and, in the case of actress Sydney Sweeney who plays Reality, taking the performance to the nth degree in that she would talk with the real Ms. Winner on zoom calls and study her mannerisms and so on as she was talking to her. She looks a little bit like her too... something which becomes apparent when real life artefacts are used on some of the images thrown up on the screen for illustrative purposes or to push a point.

Okay, so we have Sweeney as Winner, Josh Hamilton as Agent Garrick, Marchánt Davis as Agent Taylor and Benny Elledge as Unknown Male. Plus a dog and a cat, representing Reality’s pets, who hold things up slightly when they need to be tied up and put into controlled situations before a room in the house is used for Reality’s initial interrogation, which is what this film is all about. And all of the actors in this movie are absolutely great. And, let’s face it, if drama does stem from reality then the drama inherent in the dialogue provided by the FBI recording in Reality, is certainly one step closer to drama than, well, normal reality... you know, with a lower case r.

But, of course, it’s drama as opposed to ‘just reality’ so, there are all manner of visual and audio contrivances (such as a musical underscore) to enhance that drama. Just as there are also elements to constantly remind the audience that they are watching a true series of events unfold in real time, more or less as they happened.

Of that latter technique we have the time settings given precisely. For example, after an opening bit of footage showing Reality working at her desk in an office which constantly has Fox News on the TV screens, something used by her later to try and explain her motivations, we jump into the main meat of the film which takes place, as the screen tells us... 25 days later. June 3, 2017 - Augusta, Georgia. Then, throughout the movie, at random moments, we jump cut to an on screen graphic depicting the sound waves of the recording as the conversation (or not) is being spoken. In addition to reminding the audience that they are essentially listening to a version of a direct transcript, these are accompanied by a time stamp somewhere on the screen. Although, since it’s such a useful device, the time stamp is not solely used in the scenes depicting the graphics. So we can see, for instance, that it’s not until 4.07pm, 37 minutes into the recording, until she is accompanied from the front yard area into her home to begin the actual interrogation.

And, though the film is relatively impartial to the rights and wrongs of the situation... we know it’s almost an hour into the film before she admits to her crime. I’ll come back to that in a minute.

Another, truly wonderful moment of artistry in the mechanics of how the script of the transcript is presented lies in the parts of the recording which the general public are not allowed to know about. At one point, we are shown a text of the conversation we are listening to and part of the recording has been redacted... there’s then a weird, scribbly high pitched computer gibberish sound made when the cursor travels over that part. And then, once the director has put that audio signifier into the audience’s mind that anything featuring that sound effect is a redacted part of the audio as it stands, she then pushes that angle visually. So as we are watching the conversation unfold between the actors, whenever somebody says something which has a redacted portion in it, the sound cue returns and they are deleted visually from the screen for the few seconds that part of the dialogue is being said. There’s a fantastic moment where the sound effect is going off and Sydney Sweeney walks towards the camera, left of screen and, as the redaction ends, we find she is face to face with another character in the room. So, yeah, for a directorial debut in the motion picture industry, I have to hand it to Tina Sutter for fully grasping how to play around with the boundaries of the cinematic language. This hopefully won’t be her last movie.

The only other thing I will say about the content of the film/play... which has Reality Winner’s full endorsement (although, I believe she feels to actually watch it herself and relive the encounter may be too traumatic), is that I think it’s somewhat open to interpretation as to whether you come out on her side or not. Yes, she was definitely found guilty of passing on a printout of a classified document to a newspaper which proved the election results were hacked and rigged... and got a ‘five years and change’ prison sentence for it. At least that’s my understanding of it... as regular readers may remember, politics just isn’t my thing. The flip side as hinted at in the movie’s final moments seems to be in defence of the subject of the film, perhaps asking the question... was that not doing more of a public service to the American people by letting that truth out there than if it hadn’t got out?

I don’t have an answer to that, at least not an official one but, yeah, it’s a hard call. I kinda wish there were no secrets held by any government agency anywhere (I want to know more about the space aliens) but there’s also probably a very compelling case to be made that many things classified at this level of secrecy is a necessity, I would imagine.

At the end of the day, all I know for sure is two things. One is that I really love that a movie has to have a credit in the final roll that holds the title ‘video glitches’. Secondly, that Reality is an absolutely riveting piece of drama and I would recommend it to most people. Whether justice is served in terms of being a drama closer to reality and whether justice was served to Reality, is something you’ll have to decide for yourself, I think.

Twin Peaks Series One

Norwegian Wood

Twin Peaks Series One
Produced by David Lynch & Mark Frost
1990 USA Blu Ray Zone B

Well... it’s been a long time since I settled back down to watch episodes of Twin Peaks, I can tell you.

It’s hard to believe it’s been 28 years since I last watched these things. I remember it fairly vividly because it coincided with when I was studying for my degree in Graphic Design and all the other ‘kids’ were talking about it too. In fact, one of the things that sticks in my mind was that, when some episodes were broadcast, I’d have a few of my old school friends over to watch that week’s episode live, as it happened (yeah, that’s how we had to watch TV in those days kiddies... one week at a time) and my mother would bake us a cherry pie specifically so we could be chomping down and knocking it back with some coffee as we were all hypnotised by the latest exploits of Special Agent Dale Cooper and the residents of that small, surreal town.

I guess you can all figure out why I’m rewatching these now, though, right?

Lynch has now embarked on a third series which, maybe, picks up on things many years after the point where the second series came to an abrupt, cliff-hanger of an ending... albeit he’s doing it without some of my favourite characters in the latest incarnation. Now, I’m not blessed with having whatever digital channel have the exclusive rights to the new series, so I really have no access as yet ( please note, I wrote the first draft of this review last year, before my next sentence came to pass). However, I figured there must be a Blu Ray release of these new ones coming up sometime within the next year so I thought, since it’s been so long since I watched these things, that maybe it was about time I rewatched both the first two series plus the prequel movie, Twin Peaks - Fire Walk With Me, so my memory is refreshed for when I finally am able to see the new ones. I was going to watch my old Dutch gold box set of DVDs, which was out way before it got released in that format in either America or England and which, for many reasons, I never actually got around to watching when I ordered it decades ago. However, while I was hunting for bargains in Fopp Records I came across a real bargain with the new Blu Ray set being even cheaper than it is on Amazon. All 29 episodes, plus the pilot, plus the international version of the pilot with the closed ending, plus the movie prequel and gazillions of missing scenes was going for just £20... so I thought I’d pick it up and really revisit this great TV show again, in style.

David Lynch was a really huge name at the time this came out and we were all chomping at the bit to see the first episode. We were all expecting something a little surreal... which it certainly is, especially in the second series... and we’d also been warned, via the good old Radio Times television guides from that year, that the show would be a soap opera of sorts. What we weren’t expecting was the wide eyed 1950s innocent style of soap opera dialogue mixed with some really interesting visual designs and a strong sense of being caught up in the dark belly of small town USA. Although, I kinda guess we should have seen it coming after Blue Velvet.

Everything is fairly laid back and the majority of the first episode introduces us, fairly slowly, to most of the supporting characters as we share with them the discovery of Laura Palmer’s corpse, wrapped in plastic and murdered in somewhat unusual circumstances. The last third of the first episode introduces Kyle MacLachlan’s Special Agent Dale Cooper of the FBI, as he officially joins Sheriff Harry S. Truman (played by Michael Ontkean) to solve the mystery.

I hadn’t realised it at the time it was being shown but, each episode is meant to represent one day (and night) in the life of Twin Peaks so the series runs in something approaching edited highlights of ‘real time’... therefore, hot on the heels of Agent Cooper checking into The Great Northern Hotel at the end of that pilot episode, we join him hanging upside down like a bat in his room the next morning at the start of the second episode and things start to move along very quickly after that.

Twin Peaks is one of those shows you can’t really describe to someone... you just have to let them watch it and be slowly seduced by its dreamy charms. However, there were some interestingly eccentric characters and set pieces along the way in the first, very short series of just eight episodes (including the pilot) which everybody remembers, some of which became almost cliché when they were revisited more often in the show’s second year.

Like the dancing, thumb clicking dwarf played by Michael J. Anderson, inhabiting a dream world that’s possibly not only existing in the dreams of Agent Cooper and in which he and any other characters, perform and talk their dialogue backwards before the film is reversed to make more sense (more sense being a very relative phrase in the small town of Twin Peaks, of course). Lynch’s regular musical collaborator, Angelo Badlamenti, provides a wonderfully jazzy score which really comes into its own in sequences like this and Lynch’s other frequent flyer, vocalist Julee Cruise (who I was fortunate enough to meet once, very briefly) is also on hand in the series every now and again, both in vocal presence and as a singer in the show itself, to really help Lynch create a memorable and arrestingly haunting musical landscape for the town.

Another interesting character would be Catherine E. Coulson as The Log Lady. A lady who carries her log with her as a constant companion and who is willing to translate the log’s unheard response when  asked pertinent questions about the death of Laura Palmer.

And who can forget Sherilyn Fenn as Audrey, the bad school girl with a crush on Agent Cooper. Those dreamy dances and dangerously out of control shenanigans delight as she gets herself in and out of trouble and frightens away the Norwegians who were to have signed a deal with her father... a parent played by Richard Beymer, who is trying to burn down the lumber mill to grab the land... or is the soap opera plot of that one even more convoluted than we can possibly imagine? There’s a wonderful scene in the 7th episode of the series where Audrey auditions for the local whore house by taking a cherry stalk in her mouth and then tying a knot in it just by using her tongue, demonstrating to her future employer the skilled muscles available in her mouth to potential clients. That scene was talked about for months by people after it aired over here. I remember, it was quite quick that she had gotten so popular that she posed naked for an issue of Playboy magazine. That marked the one and only time I ever went out and bought an issue of Playboy (for the articles, honest guv). I still have it.

I could spend ages going through the whole cast of this terrific show but I’ll leave them there and maybe just comment that with Russ Tamblyn’s crazy psychiatrist character Doctor Jacobi... it’s nice to have two gang members from West Side Story present in the same show (Beymer being the other, of course).

Oh... and there was Bob. Bob, who would get even more terrifying in the second series, for sure.

At the end of the first season a load of threads are taken to an extreme set of cliff hangers. I remember everyone tuning in for the last episode of series one expecting some kind of resolution and instead getting faced with loads of plot lines leaving us dangling... such as Audrey finding out that the client she is about to service in her new sex worker role is none other than her father. And, even worse, the gun shot that fells Agent Cooper at the very end of the last episode and which wouldn’t be resolved.... very, very slowly, if I recall correctly... until the following season’s opening.

People wanted more of this and, at that particular time, the network which would go on to cancel it at the end of Series Two were only too happy to let Lynch and Frost give it to us... although it wasn’t entirely on the creators' terms, if I recall correctly.

If you haven’t ever seen Twin Peaks, get yourself hooked up to it because it's quite wonderful (and quite powerfully heart stopping in certain moments of Series Two, if I’m remembering correctly). Essential television viewing which stands above a lot of TV history and which will transport you to another state of mind, especially if you bring a slice of cherry pie to watch it with you. Now I’m going to catch up on the second season so, you know... I’ll report back here eventually. Perhaps when the brand of gum I like has come back into style.


Twin Peaks at NUTS4R2

Twin Peaks Series One
Twin Peaks Series Two
Twin Peaks - Fire Walk With Me
Twin Peaks Series Three - Limited Event Series