‘Longlegs’ (review)

As far as horror films go, Longlegs has been one of the most anticipated horror films of 2024, not least thanks to its enigmatic marketing campaign, which has refused to reveal anything about Nicolas Cage’s titular serial killer character, creating an immense amount of buzz around the film.

Instead of going the traditional route of horror marketing and focusing excessively on the antagonist and the plot, the campaign has instead focused on Maika Monroe’s character, FBI agent Lee Harker, and the general aesthetic of the piece, successfully conveying an air of unsettling mystery.

As such, even for those unfamiliar with writer/director Osgood Perkins, the marketing has managed to be a good indicator of what to expect from his latest opus without revealing the true nature of the plot.

Thankfully, Longlegs is deserving of the hype.

From the first frame, the film is deeply unsettling, and aside from sporadic bursts of an exceedingly dramatic string score, the audience is immediately enveloped in a stoic but hazy world where everything always seems slightly off, at times in less obvious ways than others, as the film toes a fine line between realism and otherworldly terror.

The cinematography further helps to establish a world that feels familiar yet unnaturally barren, further establishing a reality that feels inherently unsafe and borderline surreal, all the while never feeling far-fetched despite its inherently occult themes.

Cage’s eerily eccentric Longlegs is used sparingly, resulting in the actor’s presence only becoming more unnerving due to the audience never truly being allowed to examine him to the point of fully demystifying the persona or mannerisms of his character.

This in turn means the majority of screen time is reserved for Monroe, who delivers a compelling, subdued performance, which further underlines the mood of the film as a whole.

Following the pensive Lee as she begins to piece together the mystery of Longlegs’ identity and the bizarre circumstances surrounding his murders, the film’s central mystery maintains its narrative momentum as it is slowly unraveled, and even when the credits roll, the truth does still not feel entirely uncovered.

This is not to say that the storytelling is in any way lacking, as the film manages to captivate without feeling the need to overly explain itself in order to do so, relying instead on the combined filmmaking elements to reinforce the overall atmosphere and themes to create something that is unsettling on a subconscious level, which makes the film oddly mesmerizing.

With regard to how satisfying the viewing experience is for the individual viewer, this is of course down to personal preference, and some may find Longlegs to be a needlessly meandering effort due to its emphasis on atmosphere over conventional terror and gore, however, for others, the emphasis on atmosphere will be where the strength of the piece lies.

Longlegs is an unsettling slow burn of a film that is fully invested in its own premise and style, meaning it does not seek to fulfill conventional horror movie parameters for filmmaking and storytelling, and while that may not be to everyone’s liking, it emphasizes that Perkins has an unapologetic and distinctive voice of his own as a filmmaker.

Verdict: 9 out of 10.

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Produced by Dan Kagan, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones,
Nicolas Cage, Dave Caplan, Chris Ferguson
Written and Directed by Osgood Perkins
Starring Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Blair Underwood,
Alicia Witt, Michelle Choi-Lee, Dakota Daulby