At the begining of the year, NEON released a number of teasers for a new horror film on their social media accounts. Going full throttle on the digital marketing, with short clips and cryptic messages engaging the internet audience, they eventually revealed the film to be ‘Longlegs’.
The new serial killer horror/thriller by Osgood Perkins stars Maika Monroe as the lead, Lee Harker, an FBI agent investigating an unsolved series of murder happening through the 90s. But the arguable star of the film leading to the release is Nicolas Cage, who stars as the main antagonist of the film, Longlegs himself. Hiding the actual character from any of the promotional material, NEON built the hype across the internet surrounding this mysterious serial killer enigma of the film.
Coming off from 2020’s ‘Gretel & Hansel’, director Osgood Perkins knows one thing and it is how to make a good looking horror film. Longlegs is at its best when Perkins experiments with the film’s look. Perkins tends to frame his shot with terrifying the audience in mind. Even with the most normal, mundane scenes. The unsettling feeling of seeing dark, empty spaces in the background of a normal shot creates a creeping feeling of something’s about to happen, even when it usually doesn’t. Perkins played the fear of the unknown brilliantly with his style of shooting the film.
The story itself is not something we haven’t seen on screen. Starting off as a disturbing cat-and-mouse detective-serial killer story, and dipping into a more supernatural territory as it progresses. The film’s mystery becomes less and less endearing as the story unfold, with Harker (Maika Monroe) being in the center of it all. Even with the titular character of Nicolas Cage, the supposed ‘monster’ of the film, the creepy aspects of his character fades as we learn more about ‘Longlegs’.
Perkins tried to write the character of Longlegs to be a mystery, refusing to reveal the background to this character to keep the viewer on edge during the film. Despite the effort, Cage’s performance as the enigma most of the times turns into the already familiar Nic Cage goofy-crazy performance, leading to the constant thinking of “this is Nicolas Cage” everytime his character acts out.
Maika Monroe gave a strong leading performance, portraying a distrubed anti-social individual whose world is consumed by the events of the film. Blair Underwood, starring as Agent Carter, Harker’s boss in the FBI also gave a strong performance despite the shallow writing the character got. The star of the film however, is Alicia Witt portraying Harker’s mother. Witt doesn’t come until the second half of the film, but her presence gives the film a fresh unsettling feeling even more so than Cage’s character, Longlegs himself.
The world of Longlegs is a terrifying one. Perkins did a good job creating a world where it feels like no one and no where is safe, including in a room full of FBI agents. The production design however, have certain inconsistencies throughout the film. Some sets feel like the viewer is transported into a different world, with Perkins’ tendencies to frame shots with symmetry. But some others, feels like there’s not much thought to it.
Longlegs is a good, terrifying horror film. The film thrives on Perkins’ experiments on composing and framing shots with horror in mind. Unfortunately, Perkins did not do the same with its story, writing an uninspired take on the serial killer thriller genre. Despite that, ‘Longlegs’ manages to keep the viewers on the edge of the seat with beautiful creepy imagery the film promised with the creative guerrilla marketing NEON did.