Longlegs (USA, 2024)

I’ve been saving Longlegs for the October Horror Movie Challenge. Not everything I’d heard about it sold me, but it at least sounded unusual. And while I often find Nicolas Cage off-putting, Osgood Perkins has made enough interesting horror films that his name is an instant draw. While Gretel & Hansel, which I reviewed in 2020, didn’t entirely work for me, I am enough of a fan of The Blackcoat’s Daughter and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House to watch pretty much anything he makes.

Longlegs is currently available on DVD and digital rental in the UK.

Synopsis

Lee Harker is an unusual sort of FBI agent. She has premonitions, although they seem to be of questionable usefulness. The first one we witness leads to the arrest of a murderer, but also the death of her partner in the process.

After a battery of tests that seem to probe more for psychic abilities than trauma, Harker is assigned to a new case. She assists Agent William Carter in tracing connections between a series of murder-suicides in which fathers killed their entire families. Each left behind a coded letter in the same handwriting, signed “Longlegs”.

Harker sets about decoding the clues to the identity of Longlegs, which suggest occult methods and motives. When she finally catches up with Longlegs himself, however, she starts to understand that her involvement with this case is anything but coincidental.

General Thoughts

It takes some serious self-confidence to try to do something new with the serial killer subgenre. Occult-influenced murderers taunting the authorities with mysterious notes have been part of our cultural consciousness since Jack the Ripper. Following the success of The Silence of the Lambs, we saw just about every variation of this story played out on the page and screen throughout the 1990s. This led to the kind of saturation that caused the zombie genre to implode a couple of decades later.

Maybe the timing of Longlegs is right, however. It has been around 25 since serial killers dominated horror media, which may be enough time for our appetite for the genre to return. More importantly, Perkins manages to use tired old tropes in new ways, telling what is ultimately a very different kind of story. The payoff, in particular, feels like it owes more to Thomas Ligotti than Thomas Harris.

The casting is terrific. While everyone has focused on Nicolas Cage, and I have to agree that this is one the best performances I’ve seen from him, Maika Monroe was the standout for me. Having her portray Alicia Witt’s daughter was a stroke of genius. For the first few minutes she was onscreen, I was wondering how Witt managed to look so young, finally realising that it wasn’t her. The resemblance is uncanny, and uncanniness is what this film is all about.

Also, as an ageing T. Rex fan, the soundtrack cheered me immensely.

Verdict

I’ll need to think about Longlegs for some time, and I shall almost certainly revisit it. It feels like the kind of film I will change my mind about several times. Some parts only clicked the day after, and reading interviews with Osgood Perkins has made me appreciate nuances that glided by me. This is a deceptively complex film, and while it does rather over-explain things in its final scenes, it still leaves the viewer to catch some important elements.

Osgood Perkins’s spare, meditative style of horror really comes into its own here. I’d hesitate to call Longlegs a frightening film, but it does get under your skin. There is a sense of menace, even if actual tension is rare, but its best scenes feel like a nightmare brought to life. This dreaminess helps what is a superficially silly premise develop real emotional depth. It is those feelings that will stick with you, not the actual plot.

I don’t think Longlegs will make my top three films this year, although I can imagine regretting this decision later. At the very least, it gets a strong recommendation for anyone looking for some subtle, weird horror this year.

The October Horror Movie Challenge

Please do join in and share your own thoughts with us about this or any other films as the month goes on. You can usually find us on Twitter, BlueSky, Reddit, Discord, or lurking in the dark corners of your home.

If you would like to play along at home, my provisional selections are:

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (USA, 2021)
Tales That Witness Madness (UK, 1973)
When Evil Lurks (Argentina, 2023)
Under Paris (France, 2024)
In a Violent Nature (Canada, 2024)
Torso (Italy, 1973)
Titane (France, 2021)
Rorschach (USA, 2015)
The Coffee Table (Spain, 2024)
Dr Caligari (USA, 1989)
Bit (USA, 2020)
The Guard From Underground (Japan, 1992)
Oddity (Ireland, 2024)
Speak No Evil (Denmark/Netherlands, 2022)
Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (USA, 1982)
Grave Torture (Indonesia, 2024)
Bedlam (USA, 1946)
The Innsmouth School For Girls (USA, 2023)
Daddy’s Head (UK, 2024)
All You Need Is Death (Ireland, 2024)
Eight Eyes (USA/Serbia, 2021)
Poor Things (Ireland/UK/USA, 2023)
Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye (Italy, 1973)
Longlegs (USA, 2024)
Night of Fear (Australia, 1973)
Stopmotion (UK, 2024)
Terrifier (USA, 2016)
Azrael (USA, 2024)
Faust (Germany, 1926)
Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (Hong Kong, 1991)
I Saw the TV Glow (USA, 2024)

A Final Note

If you have been enticed here by these posts, please do look around at some of our other film reviews. We also have a podcast, called The Good Friends of Jackson Elias, which occasionally covers horror films. If this appeals, you might want to check out some of the following episodes.