I’ve, ahem, long been a fan of the work of Osgood Perkins. From his haunting boarding school thriller and feature debut The Blackcoat’s Daughter to his haunting haunted house story I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives in the House to his haunting and pitch-black reimagining of the classic fable, Gretel and Hansel, he just knows how to hit the right notes for me.
Longlegs, though. For the first time in his career, there is a mainstream buzz and a powerhouse marketing campaign behind Oz’s new project, resulting in one of horror’s most anticipated releases of the year. Recruiting Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage in an exploration into Satanism and serial killers, Longlegs somehow manages to discern many of my specific horror movie triggers – haunted dolls, close-ups of mutilated faces, chilling crime scene stills, and abrupt tonal shifts – and distill them into what, for my money, is the most uncomfortable horror outing of the year so far.
Young FBI agent Lee Harker (Monroe) is kind of psychic. Not in the way that your annoying friend Jill says she is, but actually possessing a certain amount of not-perfect intuition. This ability catches the eye of Carter (Blair Underwood), who is working on a case involving a serial killer named Longlegs which has gone cold. Longlegs’ MO is that he kills entire families, but leaves no remnant of his presence at the crime scenes except for cryptic notes written in code. In each incident, it appears as though the family patriarch has committed a murder-suicide. With Lee on the case, clues leading to Longlegs begin to unravel, along with Lee herself.
It’s established early on that Nicolas Cage is Longlegs, though under the layers of heavy makeup, ghostly white hair, odd costuming, and his particular mannerisms, it’s almost possible to forget. Every time Cage appears onscreen as Longlegs his presence (even more than usual) seems to disrupt the entire film and distorts reality around him. I can’t think of a role in which Cage is more frightening, less predictable, and more depraved, and that’s really saying something given the breadth of his career. His Longlegs will be a villain I’ll be thinking about and revisiting for years to come.
While Cage will likely get the lion’s share of the attention in Longlegs ,along with Monroe (who is also terrific and elegantly nuanced for such a tightly-wound character), for me the standout is Alicia Witt as Ruth Harker. Witt has been out here doing it for forty years since her debut as Alia in David Lynch’s Dune (1984) and few can say they’ve worked with such a wide range of directors from Lynch to John Waters to Cameron Crowe. Witt’s Ruth in Longlegs is a bright spot even among this incredible cast. She is quietly powerful and strident while concealing deep pain, and has the ability to flip on a dime, expertly mirroring Cage when the occasion calls for it. Along with every performance in Longlegs (including Underwood and a slightly-more-than-a-cameo surprise for Oz fans midway through the film), it is a clinic in commitment to a role and the embodiment of losing oneself into a character.
Imagery in the film, meticulously composed and chilling in their starkness, seems to seep through the screen. At times Longlegs feels, by design, like flipping through cold case files and coming across hidden clues in the background of images. I feel like one could hit pause at just about any moment of Longlegs and come away with some of the most uncomfortable stills that 2024 horror has to offer. It’s not found footage exactly, but portions of the film feel almost too real. Longlegs will often present a still image, usually of a disturbing crime scene, with a barely-perceptible slow zoom-in that makes it feel like you’re gradually being drawn into it, making the film seem even more worryingly immersive in the process. It’s remarkable and such a clever way of developing the vibes. Inspired sound design and a generally drab and pockmarked look references its time period of 1992, but also harkens back to the grainy film stock of the 1970s where the film begins and references several times. Even the title cards, splitting the film into parts, are deeply unsettling.
What’s perhaps most interesting about Longlegs is that the investigation itself, usually at the forefront of these types of films, seems tertiary. Clues are found, analyzed, and we move on without much difficulty, at least once Lee is on the case. There is little struggle in even tracking down or apprehending Longlegs, and the trouble really begins after he’s locked down. More interesting still are the side details that flesh out this world. Compelling but entirely secondary characters like the director of a mental hospital who seems a little too flippant about his job (so much so that he comes off more like a hotel concierge), or the bored young clerk at a hardware store who is just not having any of Longlegs’ shit feel essential, and provide unexpected colour while reminding us that few of the details we think are important actually matter.
Because this isn’t about the mystery, per se, or at least the mystery promised by Longlegs‘ cryptic and elaborate marketing scheme. One might think, from the many teaser trailers and marketing metered out over months by those clever tricksters at NEON (in which Perkins claims little to no involvement), that there’s a code to crack, an alternate reality game with clues to decode from billboards or secret phone numbers. In fact, Longlegs is far, far simpler. It is about the fear of what’s right in front of you, the inevitable. Solve the mystery or don’t, the danger is coming in an unstoppable wave, a force of nature. 2024 definitely seems to be the year for it, with Chris Nash’s In A Violent Nature playing on many of the same ideas and themes, though with an entirely different approach.
Ultimately Longlegs proves that Perkins has a deep and visceral understanding of what scariness means, or at least the wide spectrum of elements that can provoke it. For me, everything from the film’s overall aesthetic, Cage’s character design and singularly upsetting acting choices, the overall tone, visual style, and sound cues, and just the general vibes of Longlegs feel like expertly tuned strings of an instrument. In a recent interview, Perkins says “ I like the horror genre because it’s the genre that permits the most invention and it encourages the most poetry. It’s all guessing and grasping at what is essentially unknowable.” This is a fascinating take to me in support of a film like Longlegs where the parts you think will be the central mystery, or at least central to the mystery, are often literally spoken out loud. The actual mysteries, the unknowable ‘why’ of Longlegs is what’s left unsaid, for the audience to attempt to tease away. And in doing so, perhaps finding your own truth, your own fears along the way, is where the poetry lies. But the craftsmanship behind Longlegs also allows for you to choose a more passive approach, to let the meticulously-composed shots and dissonant chords of the score to simply wash over you. Not every mystery needs solving.
Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs is currently in theatres from NEON.
Hail Satan!
