“Longlegs” is an incredibly well-made film with some of the best performances you’re likely to see in the horror genre this year.
Anytime a new film is showered with hyperbolic praise prior to its release, I feel a little bit bad for it. Receiving such raves so early on practically invites general audiences to meet the film with a fair dose of skepticism and maybe even a dash of scorn. It fundamentally alters an audience’s relationship with the film; they are no longer entering the darkness of a movie theater to see a movie projected on screen, they are doing so to see the movie. Such is very much the case with Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs, a horror-thriller film which has received bylines such as “the scariest film of the year” and “the scariest film of the decade” in equal measure over the past few weeks.
So, is Longlegs the scariest film of the decade? It’s not really fair to walk into a movie theater with any semblance of that expectation in your head in the first place, is it?
Is Longlegs the scariest film of the year? It’s a more than worthwhile contribution to the conversation of modern horror cinema. With Longlegs, Oz Perkins has delivered a film so concentrated in its visual form, so meticulous in every element of its design and production, and so invested in exploring horrific ideas through intrinsically cinematic means. Longlegs is an experiential horror cinema-of-attractions incarnate, and that’s more than worthy of praise.
TOP FIVE OF “LONGLEGS”
5. THE PROLOGUE
The opening moments of Longlegs are some of the film’s very best. From the ominously screeching sound design and rolling distortion of Zilgi’s musical score as the production logos roll in, to the deliberately lengthy holds on that single red square in the center of the frame, to the ways the colors of the film gradually transition to their natural state, everything about the opening minutes of Longlegs conveys a single emotion: dread.
There’s an immediate sense of foreboding conjured by Perkins and co. through sparse and meticulous visual language alone. This extends to the truncated aspect ratio itself, which generates a sense of unease and is maintained just long enough that I heard people in my audience audibly whispering to each other, “Is it going to look like this for the whole movie?” which is ideal. Again, Perkins’ film had immediately put the audience on edge and made them uncomfortable through cinematic vernacular alone.
This all crescendos as the prologue unfolds in earnest, introducing more of Zilgi’s disarming score, the all-encompassing wide angles of Oz Perkins and cinematographer Andrés Arochi’s frame, the deliberate pacing and synchronous cutting of editors Greg Ng and Graham Fortin, and culminating with the introduction of Nicolas Cage as Longlegs. Everything about this introduction is done with such awe-inspiring care and craft. The framing of Cage being cut off so we don’t get a good look at him, the sound mixing done on the vocals of Cage’s delivery—every bit of this is so exquisitely fear-inducing in its staging, framing, and design, and it all culminates with an absolutely unforgettable title drop.
4. MAIKA MONROE’S PERFORMANCE
You know who’s great? Maika Monroe is fucking great. From The Guest to It Follows to The Watcher, Monroe has continuously delivered spellbinding performances in exciting horror films, and her work as the lead in Longlegs is no exception.
Her performance as Lee Harker is off-kilter, restrained, and deeply sorrowful in its own ways. Harker goes on a pretty insane arc over the course of the film, and while it doesn’t all go off without a hitch, Monroe is far from the issue. Even in the film’s weakest moments, Monroe is selling the absolute shit out of this thing.
The ways in which she gradually strips back layers of disconnect between her character and the audience, gradually bringing us deeper and deeper into her character’s internal world in tandem with Perkins’ script, is hypnotic. With a procedural horror-thriller centered on the lead female detective’s strangely intimate relationship with an antagonistic serial killer set in the ‘90s, it feels like Silence of the Lambs comparisons are almost hack to bring up as it’s a bit too on the nose. But Lee Harker truly does feel deliberately modeled to be in the same vein as Jodie Foster’s iconic Clarice Starling, and Maika Monroe not only rises to that challenge but exceeds it, turning what might have seemed a bit too familiar on the page into something entirely her own onscreen.
Also, she has a real gift for what can only be referred to as ‘final girl breathing’ that is really highlighted in numerous sequences here, making it clear why she’s earned the title of scream queen.
3. WEAK SPOT: THE CLIMAX
For as much as I enjoyed Longlegs, I was thoroughly underwhelmed by its ending. At the end of the day, Longlegs is a mystery, and while Perkins has a real gift for making the unraveling of that mystery hypnotic and compelling, the actual answers to said mystery were not particularly enthralling for me personally. I’m certain mileage will vary on this element of the film.
But beyond feeling like it all coalesced into something that was distinctly less than the sum of its parts, the actual climax of the film itself also just plays strangely stilted, leaving one feeling more than a bit unsatisfied. Whereas so much of Perkins’ visual language throughout the film feels so holistic in its intent and driven by this nigh omniscient staging, the finale is basically just a series of singles all cut together in a really jarring way, with lots of dialogue that plays off-screen and seems like it was ADRed in after the fact.
In the end, the film’s overarching mysteries and themes go out with a befuddling and deflating whimper rather than a bang, which is unfortunate.
2. OZ PERKINS’ DIRECTION
If you’ll notice, buried in my criticisms on the last point is actually a great deal of praise for Perkins’ direction throughout the rest of the film, because it’s great. The way in which Perkins and cinematographer Andrés Arochi’s painstakingly craft these starkly lit, often black canvas-esque compositions with their ever-wide framing is truly exciting. So much of the frame is so often populated with dark corners that Perkins spends the film subtly (and then not so subtly) pushing the audience to take increasing notice of.
It works insanely well, and Arochi’s use of strong single-source lighting and in-frame lighting sources is genuinely inspired. Operating off of classical horror principles to build palpable suspense and dread through carefully crafted visual imagery alone, Longlegs is saturated with an unnatural and ominous energy for the entirety of its runtime.
It’s also worth mentioning here that Perkins brings a real tenacity to the forefront here, incorporating an almost cinema-of-attractions level of exhibitionism into the film. There is a deeply experiential quality to the film, which Perkins generates by exploiting the multiple aspect ratios, some Kuleshov-ian editing, and by sitting audiences with the faces of his performers such sustained takes.
1. NICOLAS MOTHERFUCKING CAGE
I love Nicolas Cage. He is an entity unto himself, an unquantifiable commodity. An actor who pushes the very boundaries of his craft every time he’s up to bat, and challenges what audiences consider acceptably verisimilitudinous in film. Even in less-than-stellar movies, Nic Cage brings one million percent of himself to the frame and consistently delivers deeply enthralling, endlessly watchable work.
I say all of this to convey that I found Nic Cage’s performance in Longlegs to be genuinely transcendent. Cage’s portrayal is unsettling, mesmeric, and outright monolithic. The film wisely reserves him, using him sparingly throughout, even as his presence looms large over the entire picture. But every time Cage appears onscreen, there is a viscerally palpable reaction. In playing such a deranged and heightened individual, Cage doesn’t feel like he’s acting. Somewhere deep inside himself, Cage found profound emotional grounding for this character and anchors every nuance of his performance in such authenticity and reality that it feels outright invasive.
It’s a miracle of a performance, and one that I hope Cage gets proper acclaim and attention for.
RGM GRADE
(B)
Overall, Longlegs is an incredibly well-made film with some of the best performances you’re likely to see in the horror genre this year. Oz Perkins’ direction is stupendous, showcasing immense growth from the writer-director since his previous film just a few years ago. Maika Monroe continues to prove why she’s one of the most talented and subversive actresses of her generation. And Nic Cage puts his whole heart and soul into his performance, generating an abyss into which one looks and cannot help but feel that same abyss staring back.
I wish the film had stuck the landing and that the answers to its questions felt even half as enthralling as the actual asking of the questions did, but there’s more than enough here to be awed by. Is Longlegs the best horror film of the year? The honest answer is that it deserves to be seen and appreciated on its own merits rather than contending with that moniker.
