Review - LONGLEGS
Directed by: Osgood Perkins
Screenplay by: Osgood Perkins
Starring: Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Blair Underwood
Running Time: 101 Minutes
Rating: 3.5/5
Whatever you may think of Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs, it will be a perfect example of a film that excelled in its absolute control of its exceptional marketing campaign. A vice grip on this generation's audience of modern horror enthusiasts, Longlegs has controlled its audience with its fascinating and alluring teaser campaigns and viral marketing across social media. With its buzz building around the presumably “scariest film in the last decade,” Longlegs has weight behind its ongoing success as it slowly transfixes audiences across the globe. Osgood Perkins’ newest foray into atmospheric horror is a triumphant encapsulation of the horrors of humanity and the terrifying nature behind the darkest of our souls.
As a series of devastatingly violent and gruesome murders begin to surface across the ghostly countryside of 1980s Oregon; Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) of the FBI is assigned to a task force to investigate and unravel the mystery of the so-called Longlegs killer (Nicolas Cage in a baffling, gonzo performance). His killings are meticulous and precise - always a family, usually that with young children, all brutally murdered with no signs of struggle and without signs of a murder-suicide. A letter left from a presumptive killer, written in a mysterious and Zodiac-like cryptic alphabet and hauntingly signed with the mononym, Longlegs. The film frames some of these dark, violent images through a children’s viewfinder, the aspect ratio changes and Perkins moves through each photograph and horrifying image in a flash. Often pushing through the unsettling imagery quick enough to linger in your mind after each shot.
While Longlegs’ marketing prides itself on the horror and absolute terrifying nature of the film, Perkins crafts Longlegs as an exercise in unsettling dread and a building apprehension of a dark, sinister nature. It is definitely not frightening in the sense that you would cover your eyes in every sequence of the film or brace yourself in anticipation of a cruel jump scare. The film is more effective as a transitory plane; a space that fills your soul with dread and terror, with its imagery and content much more disturbing with every minute after its final frame. With veiled characters with glistening piercing eyes, horned shadows lurking in the background of the forest or even entities approaching from behind. Perkins crafts Longlegs as one that is intentionally unsettling and disorienting; whether it would be claustrophobic tight close-ups on characters, long tracking shots following Harker navigating cramped corridors, or even wide shots with empty space and many an opportunity for ghostly movements that can deceive your eyes.
Longlegs is, if not anything less, a powerful film that relies on the strength of its excellence in marketing. With its latest campaign utilizing Maika’s heartbeat rising in her first camera test with Nicolas Cage - the hype further builds its social media presence and conversation just prior to its release. Thankfully, Longlegs is still an effective film that borrows from its serial killer procedurals of films past (Fincher’s Zodiac or even Se7en) and encapsulates them with the unsettling, distressing nature of Egger’s The Witch. A ghostly demonic terror that lurks in the shadows; an evil that waits and lingers in Perkins’ most disturbing imagery and content, rather than revelling in the screams and cries of an audience in terror. At times, it feels like Longlegs builds to a visceral crescendo of unnerving tension but it never feels like it accomplishes a cathartic release of its rising horror.
Longlegs is an atmospheric whirlwind of malevolent evil and horror. Osgood Perkins ushers in a new wave of generational modern horror and we are all seated for it.
