Longlegs (2024) Review: A Dread-Inducing and Atmospheric Serial-Killer Horror
Neon, the studio behind the much-anticipated Longlegs, really does a great job promoting the movie with its ingenious marketing campaign. From the cryptic teasers leading up to the haunting official trailer, one of the smartest moves is eschewing Nicolas Cage in full look as the elusive serial killer. We only get to hear his sinister voice and at some point, strategically obscure shots as the marketing campaign predominantly focuses on Maika Monroe’s character as the FBI agent assigned to the case. And it works, which helps to pique one’s interest and curiosity. It was undoubtedly one of the best and most memorable movie marketing campaigns I’ve ever seen, ranking alongside The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield in the horror category.
Written and directed by Osgood Perkins, Longlegs follows young FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), whose unusually high intuitive skills caught the attention of her superior, Agent Carter (Blair Underwood). He enlists her to join his team to investigate the gruesome murders of different families with a piece of evidence left behind at every crime scene — a note written in coded alphabets and signed “Longlegs”.
Perkins reportedly inspired his movie from the popular 1990s era of serial-killer thrillers, notably The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en. The former’s inspiration is particularly evident when Monroe’s FBI agent recalls Jodie Foster’s Oscar-winning turn as Clarice Starling. They share a few similarities as their characters work in the same law enforcement agency and are ambitious rookies assigned to important cases tracking serial killers. The only notable exception in Longlegs is Monroe’s character’s aforementioned unique ability.
Having seen Perkins’ previous three movies including The Blackcoat’s Daughter, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House and Gretel & Hansel, I always admired his distinct filmmaking style for employing deliberate use of shadow and lighting, atmospheric visuals and slow-burn dread. But Perkins has this tendency of style-over-substance direction, making me wonder if Longlegs would continue the same trend. Besides, a good marketing campaign can be deceiving and may lead to disappointment once the movie is finally out.
Well, the good news is that I find Longlegs ranks as Perkins’ best work so far, even though it has its few shortcomings (more on this later). The movie gets off to a creepy start framed in a claustrophobic, boxy 4:3 aspect ratio as Perkins successfully establishes its dread-inducing atmosphere right from the get-go. There’s a creeping sense of uneasiness imbues Andrés Arochi’s unnerving cinematography along with Zilgi’s ominous score and Eugenio Battaglia’s skin-crawling sound design.
The old-school aspect ratio appears on and off throughout the movie for the flashback scenes while the 1990s-set story surrounding Lee’s ongoing investigation is shot in widescreen format. For the latter, Perkins and Arochi utilise a sepia-like golden and clinical visual palette that evokes the feel and look of some of David Fincher’s psychological thrillers. Low-key lighting and shadows are prominently used during the nighttime scenes to chilling effect, particularly during a scene when Lee senses someone is watching her while she’s alone at home.
The story paces like a police procedural but less mainstream type than what we used to see in the 1990s thrillers. It leans more towards the arthouse horror vibe, which may frustrate audiences yearning for nostalgia or straight-out genre fare. Perkins prefers to keep things elliptical and ambiguous with multiple ideas added in from the bits and pieces of the serial-killer tropes to the Satanic/religious horror, a half-psychic protagonist (Monroe’s Lee Harker), possessed dolls and recurring hallucinatory nightmare. His overall mix-and-match enigmatic storytelling approach works well in keeping me immersed in the movie.
But it’s not without its fair share of flaws, namely Perkins’ awkward move of shoving in an exposition-heavy moment. The much-hyped Nicolas Cage in a serial killer role does give me the creeps with his forbidding voice (“There she is“) and he’s at his best when the camera doesn’t frame him in his entire presence. But the eventual full reveal of Cage’s character comes across as weirdly over-the-top, even borderlines to a parody as if the movie is trying too hard to make him scary. Perhaps keeping him obscured throughout the movie with his voice intact might have worked better not to break the illusion of Cage’s character being an enigma.
As for Maika Monroe, she delivers an engaging performance as the dedicated but vulnerable FBI agent Lee Harker with strong supporting turns from Blair Underwood as her superior and Alicia Witt as Lee’s devout mother, Ruth. Being a serial killer movie, Longlegs contains sparse but effective moments of macabre imagery and sudden bursts of graphic violence.
