‘I know you’re not afraid of a little dark. Because you are the dark…’
I was supposed to see Longlegs as part of its theatrical run but then my daughter was selfishly born early and so I had to wait until now to see Oz Perkins’ extremely hyped film. Now I have seen it, I’m glad that I didn’t sit through Longlegs while on the cusp of fatherhood. It might have pushed me over the edge…
FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) attempts to solve a series of grisly murders that always culminate in a man killing his whole family and then himself. We meet the killer in the opening scene. The eponymous Longlegs as played by Nicolas Cage is an erratic, childlike maniac with dishevelled hair and white make-up. It’s quite the performance. When it is revealed that Longlegs likely has an accomplice, Harker must solve the mystery before the final family in the sequence is butchered.
Using Seven and Zodiac as a jumping-off point, Longlegs is a dark and twisted ode to the ‘golden age’ of serial killers. Longlegs’ make-up recalls the clown garb employed by John Wayne Gacy, the Satanist angle is a nod to Richard Rameriz and the coded letters are obviously indebted to the Zodiac Killer. Cinematically, Longlegs has more in common with The Silence of the Lambs than it does the slasher subgenre and this lends the whole experience a darkness that is often absent from modern-day horror movies. Writer-director Perkins is not afraid to stare into the abyss and he produces several sequences here that are true nightmare fuel.
While not quite the all-encompassing horror bonanza that the hype machine suggested, Longlegs is a singular and innovative slice of suburban terror that is tough to shake off – a bleak fairytale of a movie.
