Longlegs is About What Lurks Beneath
An oft raised question: Why do we watch horror movies?
A more troubling one: What horrors do we fail to see around us?
Ozgood Perkins’ new thriller-horror Longlegs is about knowing where to look for truth. But FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) comes to find that there are two dangers which attend that vision: looking too long, and being blind to everything else.
Monroe’s Harker has a cunning ability for knowing where to look, such that her boss Carter (Blair Underwood) selects her for helping out on an unsolved case that has spanned decades. Families have been murdered across suburban and rural Oregon, seemingly at random and years apart. They seem most apparent as murder-suicides—the staid husbands suddenly turning violent, killing their wives and kids before self-destruction—except for cryptic cyphers left at each scene that are signed “Longlegs.”
Carter needs Harker’s intuition, but that intuition doesn’t always lead to good outcomes. (Just ask her partner from her previous case.) It’s not long before Harker cracks Longlegs’ code, but she also lands on his radar. There’s something personal about Longlegs’ interest in Harker, but she can only find her answers by staring longer into the evil that lurks below the surface. “Nasty stuff,” as one character warns.
Seven and The Silence of the Lambs are obvious touchpoints for Perkins film, but there are echoes of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, as well. As the opening credits roll (after a frightening, snow-shocked prologue), quick frames of images flash by. Bergman turned to slaughtered lamb and penis to jar his audience; Perkins settles on a coiling snake. The viper hints at the Satanic threads that will be threaded later on, tapping into religious imagery as well as instinctive fear. Longlegs, whatever his purposes may be, represents the poisoning of Eden, the poisoning of America.
Perkins’ film sustains an unnerving tone throughout its runtime, and the imagination shown in the opening is at once the spark and sign of the skill to follow. Andres Arochi’s camera knows when to pull wide and when to stay close. The former moments perk up our nerves, fearful that someone or something will shatter in from just out of frame. The latter traps us in our tension as we feel Harker’s labored breath and rising pulse. Longlegs is strongest in its still, darkly toned frames. The dusky blues envelop; the back bar orange glows cast the sparest of warm respites into the darkness. The cinematography and production also excel at forming oppressive spaces, such that every cluttered kitchen and office hallway feels like a prison. And we’re trapped there with an evil presence we don’t understand.
While Longlegs excels at tone-setting, it falters in its storytelling. The film is packed with genre tropes (Satanic cults, creepy dolls, a bizarre serial killer, multiple calls coming from inside the house) that it attempts to complicate, but it’s only partially effective. The story is also heavy handed in its foreshadowing—it doesn’t require a careful observer to be able to guess where this is heading by the halfway mark. But the true culprit is what’s lacking, as Longlegs fails to build upon its most interesting threads. The occult allusions boil down to 666 and an inverted triangle, hardly enough to be truly creepy. Likewise, the plot hints at a religion that has weighed on people like a burden. Prayers intended to ward off evil may have merely made them weaker to evil’s influence. But it’s too undeveloped to be a critique.
Perkins could have used a little more time to dig into this space. That snake makes its return later in the film, but by now it could have added layers of symbolism. What’s poisoning this American Eden might be Satan, or it could be a raw aggression veiled behind fundamentalism and work ethic. Does such a religion—be it spiritual or civil—save or entrap? Even as the denouement shifts closer to The VVitch than its serial killer forebears, Longlegs never gives these themes quite enough weight to be substantial. In the end, the actual plot details are tied up too neatly, while the ideas are left too loose. It’s ironic that this film fails at investigating what’s below the surface.
Speaking of things left undiscussed: What about the Nicolas Cage of it all? His appearance as the mysterious Longlegs isn’t a spoiler but was clearly a draw for the packed theater I attended. Perkins puts a heavy dose of makeup and prosthetics on Cage, but not enough to leave him totally unrecognizable. His killer bounces and dances more than he talks, but when he does it’s with a warbly falsetto. He’s not angry like John Doe or subtly threatening like Hannibal Lecter; instead, he taps into some terrible glee. Call it unstrung camp. I can’t say that it’s unskilled or unaffecting, but I do think it’s wrong for the story. Perkins and his collaborators create a fearful and tense world that still remains our world. That grounded nature makes it all the more disturbing. Cage’s performance strains against that reality, breaking the tonal clarity the film otherwise maintains. His is not the only ill-placed performance—the film puts considerable plot weight on Lee’s mother (Alicia Witt), but the character is little more than a thin trope, undermining the mystery’s thrill.
Monroe’s work is much sharper, as she embodies an uncomfortable truth teller. Harker can’t look away, but her tunnel vision closes her off from everything around her. Monroe somehow conveys poise and determination alongside hesitancy and uncertainty. She holds the film together even as it wends its way farther afield of grounded reality, centering and captivating the audience’s attention.
Perkins’ Longlegs is a strong film that remains a few small steps from lasting greatness. The experience of its creepiness is hard to match, even if its story gives little food for thought. Still, the uncanny feeling the film left me with remained through the night and is even returning a bit as I write, which must recommend the film for anyone interested in encountering this sinister film.
