Longlegs

Release Date: July 12, 2024

Director: Osgood Perkins | MPAA Rating: R | LeavittLens Rating: 7/10

"You're dirty and sweet, oh yeah
Well, you're slim and you're weak
You've got the teeth of the hydra upon you
You're dirty, sweet and you're my girl" -Get It On, T. Rex

So opens Osgood Perkins' latest film, Longlegs - a curious epigraph, one that Perkins returns to not once, but twice, in both his opening and closing credits. Such tonally jarring glam rock references feel markedly out of place as a frame to the hyper-serious dread machine that they bookend, but given Perkins' penchant for precise and clever writing, one has to assume there's more going on here than tonal inconsistency.

Indeed, Perkins' purpose becomes clearer as his titular character is progressively uncovered. After a tension-filled introduction, we move from close-ups of Longlegs' lips and shadowy silhouette against a forest backdrop to extended time staring into his eyes and watching his eery (if not over the top) hand motions. Eventually we come to realize a flamboyance bordering on satire in the protagonist at the center of an otherwise entirely haunting story. Perhaps Longlegs is the glam rock of twisted murderers, after all.

Such flamboyance is what makes Nicolas Cage such a perfect casting here, his work always able to reach a level of absurd hysteria unmatched by any actor with his accolades. It works in this case: his evil is mostly chilling, from his looks to his voice, and even when he borders on being too much, we believe him, because he's Nic. On his trail is young FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), whose stoic and reflective face clues us in to the truth that there is something hidden, something more to her than meets the eye. During Lee's increasingly trying investigative journey, we are also introduced to her mother Ruth (Alicia Witt), a hoarder who lives alone and who herself seems off-putting. Between her and the enigma that is Lee (who seems to have remarkable foreknowledge and insight into events before they happen), we as an audience are forced onto our own detective journey, constantly putting clues together to try and sort out what is going on with the Harkers. This is exactly the task that Lee's boss, Agent Carter (Blair Underwood), is attempting to undertake, both trusting and wondering about the exact nature and connection Lee might have to the horrors unfolding around them. The horrors in question are also a strength of the film: a series of 10 murder suicides, in each case a father brutally offing his wife and children, but at each crime scene a ciphered note signed by Longlegs. With no signs of forced break-in, no DNA or evidence of anyone other than the families being present during the murders, and no outside murder weapons, its as if Longlegs was never there to begin with, leaving us with an enticing mystery to solve.

As a procedural, the film hits many of the regular beats one would expect: decoding ciphers (a la Zodiac), examining murder scenes and photographs (a la Mindhunter), attempting to get into the mind of the killer (a la The Silence of the Lambs), and even brushing up on the mythology of hell and Satan (a la Se7en). Given that three of those now classic "catching a serial killer" thrillers were directed by David Fincher, Longlegs owes a tremendous debt to the man who has perhaps perfected the feeling of dread put to image - but Perkins' homages here manage to avoid devolving into derivativeness. Indeed, at least for the first two-thirds, his unique fingerprints are all over these crime scenes.

We find every shot holds something unnerving: angles looking up towards characters from below; vast and empty canvasses of isolating terror looking into the dark woods or gray skies or strangely deserted neighborhoods; zooms that force you to lean in as they warp and bend on the edges; inserts of wriggling serpents and bubbling deep red liquid; looming dark doorways or windows in the background of shot after shot; even when Perkins and his team allow light to enter a frame, it only ever illuminates enough to make us wary of the dark still left uncovered. The result is a foreboding atmosphere of unease that cuts into the psyche like a knife into butter, accented by sound work that is particularly noteworthy. Doors closing or locks locking sound deafening at times, and the music--full of instruments and sounds your brain isn't able to fully recognize--is a symphony of apprehensiveness. In many ways, it feels like a fully realized device of disquietude, combining enough genre familiarity to make it approachable with enough unique touches to make it specially eery. Perkins reaches peaks in form (with his introduction to Longlegs, a chilling sequence where Harker receives her own personalized letter, a photo discovery, an interrogation scene, and more) that let this one stand above its contemporaries in an often oversaturated horror-thriller market. Longlegs will inevitably make you squirm, in the best way possible.

But what starts in the first two-thirds as a unique and promising premise loses some its legs in the final third, where devilish tomfoolery shows that the film's reach exceeds a bit of its grasp. While exploring such potent themes as generational sin and repressed trauma and the decaying power of isolation and loneliness early on, Perkins ultimately ends up with some ambiguous spiritual conclusions that fail to give satisfying closure to the most thought-provoking themes in his foundation. To be sure, style and substance are both here in abundance, and the scares will undeniably stick - it just seems there might have been a bit more meat to pick off the bone.