Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Osgood Perkins
Starring: Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Alicia Witt, Blair Underwood
Much of the clever marketing campaign for writer/director Osgood Perkins'
supernatural thriller Longlegs has been centred on hiding its titular
villain, played by Nicolas Cage. One promotional gimmick even saw the film's lead,
Maika Monroe, fitted with a heart monitor while filming her first scene
with Cage in character, her increased heart rate supposedly indicative of
the terrifying nature of Longlegs' appearance. The film itself does much
to build up the idea that Cage's character will have a Medusa-like effect on the audience when we eventually get a good look at him. In his early scenes he's
filmed from the neck down, from behind or at a distance. It's a serious
anti-climax when it turns out Longlegs is just a rather normal bloke,
albeit one who hasn't exactly been gifted with handsome features. The
world is full of people who are unfortunate enough to look like Longlegs,
and they have to put up with a lot of shit as it is; must we continue to
dehumanise such people, to conflate one's physical appearance with their
morality? If you're scared by Longlegs' appearance you're probably the
sort of weirdo who pulls their kids close whenever a disabled person
approaches.
Many horror fans are drawn to the genre because they feel like outsiders,
and they often empathise with the monster rather than the torch-wielding
mob. Longlegs isn't a movie for such folk. This is a horror movie for people who
still believe the West Memphis 3 are guilty, who put faith in their
institutions and turn a blind eye to the crimes of church and state. Its
heroes are FBI agents. Its villains are satanists. History will tell you
the former have been responsible for a lot more evil in the real world
than the latter. This one's for the mob, not the monsters.
Unless it's as pronounced as something like Birth of a Nation, I've never
had much trouble putting aside my own political bias and siding with that of a
filmmaker, regardless of how contemptible I find it. As such, I was
largely able to get wrapped up in Longlegs, thanks to some impressively doom-laden
filmmaking from Perkins and a stellar turn from Monroe.
The increasingly impressive actress plays Lee Harker, a rookie FBI agent who has a psychic
premonition one day that tells her a wanted man is inside a certain house.
Her clairvoyant hunch proves true, and further testing sees Lee display a
psychic gift. Her unique abilities lead to Lee being assigned to work alongside
veteran agent Carter (Blair Underwood) on the case of "Longlegs." The
Oregon area has been dogged by a series of murder/suicide cases in which
fathers have butchered their own families before taking their own lives.
At each scene is found a note featuring hitherto indecipherable symbols, and signed with the
name "Longlegs".
It's baffling why Lee is shown to have psychic powers early on, as this never plays into the narrative after that point. Lee's investigation is as
grounded as that of Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, a movie
Perkins is keen to evoke with his film's '90s setting and young female
agent. Lee uses her intellect rather than any supernatural powers to piece
together clues, and in doing so she comes to believe she may have a
personal copnnection with Longlegs.
The '90s setting may give Perkins ample opportunity to imitate David
Fincher with a piss-stained colour shceme and the backwards rolling end
credits of Se7en, but that era hasn't been chosen for merely superficial
reasons. It's easy to forget how much apprehension was in the air during
the '90s regarding the prospect of the approaching new millennium, whether
it be religious fundamentalists claiming it would spell the end of the
world or techies insisting that Y2K would cause all technology to cease
working and plunge us back into the middle ages. There was even a TV show
from X-Files creator Chris Carter called Millennium, in which Lance
Henriksen played a former FBI agent with the ability to see into the minds
of criminals, and I suspect it had a big influence on Perkins. Longlegs'
greatest asset is how it channels that millennial apprehension into a
growing feeling of dread. It has more than a little in common with Larry
Cohen's unsettling chiller God Told Me To, borrowing both that film's idea
of a killer who uses supernatural powers to manipulate others into
committing violent acts and its notion of a protagonist coming to relaise
something horrifying about themselves. The more rabbit holes Lee ventures
down, the more we get a horrible feeling she may be so far undergound she
won't be able to return to the surface.
Unfortunately all of Perkins' good work in building this almost
suffocating sense of dread is derailed when Cage's Longlegs eventually
takes centre stage. The actor is horribly miscast, and after such good
work recently in the likes of Pig and Dream Scenario, it's disappointing
to see him fall back once again on his over-the-top schtick. Once Cage is
let loose here it's impossible to take the character seriously, and
despite the heavy make-up all we can see is Cage. There are moments that
see Longlegs indulging in trademark Cage freakouts; I guess we're supposed
to find them unsettling buit they're mostly unintentionally amusing. He's
like a manic Jack that springs from its box and can't be put back, and
it's difficult to settle back into the film's previously well-established
moody rhythm for a final act that would play a lot darker were it not for Cage's
disruptive presence.
Longlegs is on UK/ROI VOD now.
