I went into Longlegs knowing a little bit about the movie, but the ad campaign was probably one of the most brilliant ad campaigns I’ve seen in a long time. Not much is revealed, and the fact that Nicholas Cage is in the movie and he doesn’t even seem to appear in the trailer was a pretty bold choice. The trailer was dark, disturbing, and hardly said anything at all about what the movie was about, but said just enough to draw in my interest. How often does a Nic Cage movie not focus the advertising on Nic Cage?
That said, I’ve seen the movie, and Cage may very well have been in the trailer. He has a rather unique look in this one.
Set sometime in the 1990s, FBI Special Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) demonstrates some psychic ability. As such, she’s put onto a case involving the mysterious Longlegs killer (Cage). Not much is known about Longlegs as his victims appear to be massive murder/suicides where the father of the family kills the rest of the family and then himself. To only clue to Longlegs’s existence is he always leaves a note in an impossible to translate cipher, signing the letter as “Longlegs.” Beyond that, the only clue is the family has a daughter with a birthday on the 14th of the month.
Whatever is going on, it’s creepy. Longlegs seems to know about Lee’s involvement in the case almost immediately, and her own mother (Alicia Witt) seems to have a some ideas about what’s going on. There does appear to be a pattern, and Longlegs may be striking again soon, adding to his bodycount. What follows is a case involving psychic visions, creepy dolls, and maybe some demonic possession. Who is Longlegs? What does he want? Can anyone stop him? It’s hard to say, and the movie plays that uncertainty until the very end.
Writer/director Osgood Perkins has a skill as a director where I would say his biggest gift is creating dark tension. He hasn’t made many feature films, but both The Blackcoat’s Daughter and Gretel and Hansel are really tense movies operating in the genres of demonic possession and folk horror, respectively. Longlegs does something similar with the works of writer Thomas Harris, creator of Hannibal Lecter. Lee Harker is something of a mishmash of those stories. Longlegs is a diabolical serial killer, something like Buffalo Bill or something, but with the hint of potentially supernatural things going on. Monroe gives a good performance here, and the movie is basically hers as she is onscreen for most of the movie’s runtime. Longlegs is a creepy movie where there’s always a feeling that something is about to happen, to the point where I wondered what Perkins was trying to set up when a shot lingered on a doorway too long. It’s an oppressive movie as it should be.
As for Cage, well, it’s a very Nic Cage-y performance. There’s no stock “Nic Cage” character aside from there’s a good chance he’s going to be a little weird, and his Longlegs is very weird. With an off-putting behavior and an appearance that looks like he might have been at least partially inspired by the Jeff the Killer meme photo, this is yet another unique Cage performance. He’s not in the movie much, and the audience doesn’t even get a clear look at his face until about the halfway point, but I think how much his performance works for you will depend on how much the movie as a whole works for you. He’s really off-putting and sticks out in this one, but he probably should be, and given how much Perkins’s movie and the other actors’ performances are downplayed, his more manic acting really drives home that this guy is just wrong somehow. For me, that works. For others, maybe not.
Grade: A-
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