Longlegs Review – A Moody Satanic Panic Horror Flick
Ken Jones, OnScreen Blog Chief Film Critic
Occasionally, a low-budget movie captures the zeitgeist and makes some noise at the box office. In 2024, that movie is Longlegs, a horror movie that has received a lot of positive buzz and word of mouth from critics and horror fans alike.
Set in the mid-90s, Longlegs features Maika Monroe, herself no stranger to the horror genre, as FBI Agent Lee Harker. Harker’s instincts in the field, bordering on clairvoyance, lead her to a paranormal branch of the Bureau, where she is put on a decades-long case of unsolved cases involving a suspect known as Longlegs (Nicholas Cage). These cases involve inexplicable murder-suicides where the father kills his family before taking his own life. Agent Harker finds herself going deeper down the rabbit hole of the unexplained as she attempts to end this killing spree.
The film does an outstanding job of setting a mood and tone; it’s a very atmospheric horror movie. The score is sparse but occasionally rises in a haunting nature. The lighting is dark, and most of the colors are muted. It’s a deliberately paced movie, but it is never slow, drawing the viewer in, building up the tension, and then breaking the tension with sudden outbursts of violence.
Some supernatural elements, initially on the fringes, eventually make their way to the forefront, so the movie starts out mainly as a police procedural and slowly morphs into something darker and more sinister. It is one of those films that I would categorize as feeling malevolent and is the kind of film that can linger with you for days.
Director Osgood Perkins (son of Norman Bates himself, Anthony Perkins!) and cinematographer Andres Arochi play with the aspect ratio a few times. The film’s opening features a nine-year-old girl holding a Polaroid camera in the 1970s, so this and other flashbacks are framed in a 4:3 boxing to look like an old Polaroid. At least twice, the screen slowly expands from that to a widescreen, giving an immersive feeling to the story as it jumps back to the present day.
Setting the film in the 90s, there are obvious parallels to and inspiration drawn from Silence of the Lambs, another film about an FBI agent trying to hunt down a serial killer in a race against time. There is an early scene during an FBI briefing of field agents where Agent Harker appears to be the only woman in the room, similar to how Clarice Starling sticks out like a sore thumb in a few FBI scenes in Jonathan Demme’s classic.
While Silence of the Lambs is a touchstone for the film, there is more of a supernatural element to this. Longlegs is a suspect who leaves coded Zodiac Killer-like letters for the agents investigating the murders. And there are strong allusions to the demonic and possession being involved in the killings. When Lee makes a breakthrough in discovering the pattern involved in the killings, the agents end up in a race against time to try to solve the case before the next killing occurs.
This is the second movie this year, along with I Saw the TV Glow, to give me X-Files vibes. Where that movie was about the obsession with episodic sci-fi horror shows from the 90s, this movie feels like a really high-end X-Files episode from the show’s peak, with the agents investigating a series of unsolved, unexplained crimes involving the paranormal.
Actress Maika Monroe has already cemented a name in the horror genre with It Follows, The Guest, and Watcher. Her Agent Lee Harker is a quiet and observant, definitely antisocial, and maybe somewhere on the autism spectrum. She has a tenuous relationship with her mother (Alicia Witt) and doesn’t have much life outside of work. She is motivated to prove herself in a male-dominated profession and willing to do the extra work. She brings a fresh pair of eyes to the cases. It’s also very unnerving as it becomes
Nicholas Cage also gives a tremendous, unhinged performance as the titular Longlegs, a man who looks albino, wears all-white clothing, talks funny, and claims to serve a higher (or maybe lower?) power. A Cage performance can go in any number of directions, but this is channeled wonderfully, perhaps his best work since Mandy.
Blair Underwood also turns in an impressive supporting performance as Agent Carter, Lee’s boss on the Longlegs case. Underwood is someone I have not seen much of in a very long time and have had limited exposure to in general. Agent Carter is a matter-of-fact, no-nonsense kind of character that has just about seen it all. He brings a gravitas to the role. He has some key scenes with Harker where he attempts to connect with her beyond the case, inviting her to his home to meet his wife and daughter despite her reluctance. It’s a very underrated performance.
It’s already been a good year for the horror genre, and Longlegs is another fine addition to the lineup in 2024. There seems to be an excess hype for this film, too. Sometimes, the hype exceeds the actual movie, and that is dangerously close to being the case here. Luckily, Longlegs brings the goods as a taut, atmospheric horror thriller that can unnerve and linger.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars