Jonah Naplan   July 13, 2024

It’s all about atmosphere in “Longlegs,” a new horror movie directed by Osgood Perkins that plays around with our senses in an artistic and often disturbing way. Genre buffs will be equally unnerved and excited to consume something this new and cool, and if the movie is as successful as it deserves to be, it will surely bonk on the heads of major studio executives by proving that a movie can be creepy without relying on jumpscares. There’s not as much to see in this film as there is to hear, often pulling away from the most brutal violence and instead letting the viewer imagine its intensity in his or her head. Of course, that’s certainly not to say that “Longlegs” censors all its carnage; select moments will stick with me as powerful images redolent of self-harm, misery and despair for as long as this movie remains unmatched in the mainstream horror market. But the vast majority of this movie’s terror is derived solely from the sound design, often drawing upon “The Zone of Interest”-level psychedelia as Perkins prods and teases the viewer relentlessly. It’s super weird and super proud of it. I hope that “Longlegs” can set a good example for how to get future horror movies right.

The main storyline takes place sometime during the 90s, but the movie tends to jump around to different decades whenever it pleases. An FBI detective named Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is investigating a series of grisly murders committed by a ruthless serial killer known as Longlegs (Nicolas Cage), an unholy fusion of Ted Bundy and Heath Ledger’s Joker. Supposedly, over the last twenty years or so, Longlegs has murdered the likes of ten families, or, at least, is only assumed to have. All the evidence points towards the family patriarch always being the real killer, slaughtering his wife and children before taking his own life. Harker, a brilliant detective and eager to prove it, purports that Longlegs is less of an actual murderer than an orchestrator, coercing the fathers into these terrible plots, and watching his plan unfold with glee as he perches outside the house. All of the victims seemingly have daughters whose birthdays are on the 13th of any given month, creating a sort of devil’s triangle when the data is compiled together on a spreadsheet.

Of course, Longlegs himself is an instantly kinetic character whose screen presence gets under your skin and lurks there for the entire runtime. Even when he’s not in a given scene, we still feel as though he’s just around the corner, spying on our protagonists, waiting to strike. Nicolas Cage brings a certain commitment to this character so often lacking in modern horror, driving himself just as nuts as the audience. The work of makeup designer Felix Fox is astounding in the way that it completely transforms the actor to the point of disappearance. Cage steps into the role and never leaves.

“Longlegs” needs such a strong antagonist because the narrative is set-up to have Barker constantly feeling as though she’s being chased by someone only partially human. At times, it doesn’t exactly feel as though Longlegs is like the rest of us. He worships Satan. He sings happy little tunes after doing something despicable. It all works because it fits within the insane and bizarre tone of the movie that’s intentionally designed to shock you long after the credits have rolled. But the good (and actually quite awesome) thing about “Longlegs” is that it’s so much more than a cinematic party trick. The physical narrative and how it unfurls itself in the screenplay, also written by Perkins, is fascinating to watch on a thematic level. Important things are revealed to the viewer in a way that’s constantly making you second guess and reframe ideas and events in your mind before completely pulling the rug out from under you in an utterly bonkers third act.

Maika Monroe is barnstorming in a role that grounds the entire movie and gives this surrealistic story an ounce of humanity. Most of the other characters seem to be in a completely different mental space than her, either trying their best to understand her philosophy or showing with their body language but not their words that they think she’s insane. Fellow FBI agent Carter (Blair Underwood) seems to be one of the only people who’s tracking with Barker’s leads, while other supporting characters seem to be intent on unsettling her and warping her perception of what’s going on here. Barker’s own mother, for one, a hyper-religious worrywart who’s constantly calling up Lee to ask if she’s said her prayers is one creepy player inside of this scheme, while an equally haunting performance from Kiernan Shipka as a survived victim of Longlegs’ spree exposes Barker to some of the horrifying reality of how these murders take place.

In the coming months, YouTube and TikTok media theorists will have a field day breaking apart and explaining this movie to their viewers, examining the ending, the opening scene and everything in between. Of course, “Longlegs” lends itself over to this perfectly and takes it in stride. It knows it’s gonna start arguments. It wants to cause controversy. It honors iconic horror movies that famously inspired uproar because some viewers just didn’t understand them and felt entitled to speak up. In this way, “Longlegs” is very much in a similar vein as 90s serial killer thrillers like “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Se7en,” yet at the same time it’s something completely new and different that you’ve probably never seen anything quite like before. Even with its furiously retro vibe and diverse fixings from a plethora of origins, there’s also something curiously modern about the whole thing—whether it’s how its female protagonist is depicted or the innovative ways that Perkins scares us, there’s something progressive about the project that proves it could only have been made today.

It all comes together in a final scene that leaves us with way more questions than answers. Everyone and everything, including Lee herself, turns out to be a pointillistic piece in the sprawling puzzle that is “Longlegs,” and the overarching verdict seems to be, well, maybe you’ll figure it out on your next rewatch. There’s much I could nitpick about the movie, between a couple of unnecessary exposition dumps that momentarily take us out of the nightmare and some pacing issues in the middle act, but forgetting about those is to appreciate how cool it is to see a slow burn horror movie of this caliber that’s really, truly unnerving. I’ll take ten more of these, please.

Now playing in theaters.