Review: Longlegs
Say Your Prayers
INTRODUCTION
This is a quick review of the newly released film Longlegs. Keep in mind this is but one of the many movies I watch every year, and that whatever initial grade I come up for this film could change for better or worse with time. To better keep up to date with both my thoughts on other movies and if my feelings on this film changed, follow me on Letterboxd.
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THE PLOT
Via Letterboxd: In pursuit of a serial killer, an FBI agent uncovers a series of occult clues that she must solve to end his terrifying killing spree.
QUICK REVIEW
It seems every year there is a horror movie that has many buzzing and declaring such things like “This is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen!”, or “I am absolutely shaken to the core and disturbed by what I just saw!”, and “This is a new horror classic!”. And almost every time I walk away from such movies shrugging my shoulders and saying they were decent, but they didn’t live up to the hype.
This year’s contender for that title is the new Oz Perkins film, distributed by the cinephile darlings Neon, Longlegs. The hype around this one has seen such good word of mouth that a small indie horror is seeing packed crowds at the theatres. I was surprised to see how many were at my local public screening on a Thursday night for this one. With great critical reviews, praise for Nicolas Cage, and the typical hyperbole about a movie that scared people to the point they couldn’t sleep afterwards, the movie caught my attention.
Typically I would wait for the Neon FYC box set at the end of the year to catch something like this, but the word-of-mouth was so insane I had no other choice but to go check this out for myself. Did I leave completely blown over and ready to declare this the greatest horror film of the year? Or did I leave like I did with previously hyped indie horror movies, shrugging my shoulders and saying “Its aight.”?
Right off the bat I’ll say that I can see why some are so blown away by this movie. The direction in this is some of the best I’ve seen for a horror film, the score is as eerie as it should be for a horror movie, and the production design and cinematography creates an atmosphere that completely hooks one into the disturbing aura and dread the movie’s story is going for. There are legitimate scares in this that made me jump in my seat, and for the most part I thought most scares were done in a way that felt natural to the story.
And yes the hype around Nicolas Cage is warranted. He is disturbingly magnificent in his role and shoots up into my personal awards ballot of Supporting Actor as of today. You have never seen Cage like this, he is literally unrecognizable and his acting is simply the best I’ve seen it since his tour-de-force in 2021’s Pig. I also liked how our main protagonist, played by Maika Monroe, is an against-type eccentric, anti-social heroine.
But while there’s plenty to point out and praise, there’s also a few things I can nitpick about. As good as the direction and atmosphere are, the movie does have pacing that drags a little too long in certain scenes; breeding a stereotypical air of pretentious indie horror. As natural as most scares come off, there were a few that came off forced and like the movie was being shocking for being shocking’s sake.
While it has some interesting concepts as a serial-killer focused procedural horror, the story of this film can hinder it at times; especially when a twist hits in the final act that you can poke so many holes in and made me want to jump into the writers room and clean up certain story beats to make it make a little more sense. As good as the performances are, the characters make some wildly baffling decisions - mainly in the climax where one character literally does nothing knowing a murder is about to take place right in front of her and which they can literally stop but they just sit there frozen to allow for the audience to be disturbed.
Overall Longlegs is an incredibly well directed, well shot, well performed, and scarily disturbing and eerie film. Nicolas Cage in particular shines bright. But some script issues and questionable story beats do bring it down from the lofty hyperbole around its word-of-mouth for me. I give it an initial grade of B. Not B-, not B+, just a straight up B. I liked it, but I did not love it to the levels others are falling in love with it.
INITIAL GRADING
