by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: $14.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Blair Underwood, Alicia Witt, Michelle Choi-Lee, Dakota Daulby, Kiernan Shipka
Intro:
Osgood but not Osgreat.
Night becomes day and day becomes night, America continues to slide into the abyss in jaw-droppingly idiotic ways and new horror movies get absurdly overhyped thanks to gleefully zealous PR teams. This latter cycle has been going on since the 1990s, with films like The Blair Witch Project garnering so many breathless accolades that the actual movie couldn’t possibly live up to the hype. And, indeed, it didn’t. That’s not to say overhyped films are bad. Hell, The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, It Follows and Hereditary are all great flicks to varying degrees, but they came to market dripping with a sticky glaze of desperate hyperbole. Longlegs is the latest genre film to be similarly moist with expectation and while the actual film is a solid chiller, it’s not the life-altering spookshow much of the marketing has promised.
Longlegs is the story of wet-behind-the-ears FBI agent, Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), who after a shocking incident on the job is believed to be a tad on the psychic side. Agent Carter (Blair Underwood), Lee’s superior, decides to utilise the twitchy rookie on a meaty serial killer case, to help find the monster known as Longlegs (Nic Cage). Not much is known about the leggy one, other than that he seems to occupy a space somewhere between Ted Bundy and Charles Manson and possesses an almost supernatural influence on his victims, causing them to commit appalling acts. As Lee investigates the case, she begins to believe that she has a more personal connection to Longlegs than expected, and things take a turn for the surreal when he starts to take an interest in her.
Longlegs has a lot going for it. The wonderfully named director Osgood Perkins (I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, Gretel & Hansel) brings a palpable sense of tension and unease to the proceedings that is really effective, particularly in the first act. Nic Cage delivers a twisted but focused performance and is almost unrecognisable and undeniably creepy. Plus, Maika Monroe and Blair Underwood both do good work here as the rookie and old hand respectively.
The problem is, the script is a bit of a whiff with an effectively intricate set up that untangles in a not particularly satisfying way by the third act. This is a movie that eagerly nods to serial killer classics like The Silence of the Lambs and Seven but doesn’t seem to fully understand what makes those movies so good.
Still and all, the vibes are good and there are genuinely effective sequences throughout, so Longlegs is by no means a waste of your time. However, eager genre fans who have been slurping the marketing Kool-Aid ought to know that Longlegs is Osgood but not Osgreat.
