In its opening weekend, “Longlegs,” a breakout horror film effectively masquerading itself as a throwback police procedural, broke box office records for its distributor NEON. Using a largely memetic marketing campaign, it has followed in the footsteps of other recent horror flicks, presenting itself as the second coming of “The Exorcist” to a younger audience for whom the horror genre begins and ends with whatever A24 has released this year. So, is its success a fad?
Well, with regard to maintaining a pervasive and discomfiting sense of dread through much of its runtime, “Longlegs” proves without peer among its contemporaries. But when the final act comes, and all its byzantine mythology must be made plain to the audience, it falls apart in a strangely poetic way. At the end of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 classic “Psycho,” viewers in that time were met with a lengthy exposition dump as a psychiatrist exhaustively cataloged the titular killer’s pathology. All the film’s tension and suspense melted away while the mystery surrounding Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) was directly spelled out.
Sixty years ago, mainstream audiences were not ready for the complex psychology at the film’s heart and needed their hands held lest they walk out of that auditorium bewildered for life. But “Longlegs,” written and directed by Anthony Perkins’ son Osgood, similarly pivots at the last minute to coddling an audience who, unlike the stuffy conservatives Hitchcock traumatized all those years ago, are more than game to put two and two together.
“Longlegs” opens with one of the strongest prologues in recent memory.
“Longlegs” opens with one of the strongest prologues in recent memory. Using a more confined, boxy aspect ratio, the film’s introductory sequence introduces us to Longlegs (Nicolas Cage), the pasty, androgynous, aging glam rock enthusiast at the heart of the film’s series of peculiar murders. Seen from the perspective of an unnamed little girl, Longlegs’ dusty, white appearance blends into the snowy environment and conjures a palpable fear. His lumbering frame, from the low height of a child, feels otherworldly and frightening, growing only more so when he hunches his body down to her level. For a nearly imperceptible flash, we see a glimpse of his face before a dramatic cut to the title sequence.
That abstract terror permeates the quieter, more staid proceedings that follow. Jumping forward 20 years to 1993, we’re introduced to Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), a junior FBI agent. Harker possesses preternatural levels of intuition presented as a middle point between potential clairvoyance (should this film devolve into some measure of science fiction) and autistic-coded pattern recognition (far likelier). Her boss, Agent Carter (Blair Underwood), conscripts her into aiding on the long-unsolved “Longlegs” case. Over multiple decades, families are annihilated in unexplainable murder-suicides, where someone leaves letters with coded word puzzles signed only “Longlegs.” But it’s the families themselves combusting inward with bloodshed and torture, so how can an external entity be the culprit?
The camera holds carefully on these inviting wide shots where the periphery of the frame feels like an omnipresent threat.
The investigation and its cinematic execution owe a lot to Jonathan Demme’s “The Silence of the Lambs,” with Monroe’s Harker channeling Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling and Underwood’s Carter capturing a variation of Scott Glenn’s Jack Crawford (later played by Laurence Fishburne on the “Hannibal” television series). It’s easy to get caught up in the plaintive, patient way Perkins lets the narrative unfold. The camera holds carefully on these inviting wide shots where the periphery of the frame feels like an omnipresent threat. While Harker labors over crime scene photos, it constantly feels like the darkness of the case will swallow her whole or that something sinister is lurking from right beyond the reach of her gaze.
Perkins establishes this sense of inevitability as a slow burn, that the moody thriller we’re trudging through is going to collide with the occult-y horror picture Cage’s satanic figure shepherds along. But once the two halves meet, the film falls apart. Up to the final act, the film largely fixates on its mood and its dark energy. There are ideas at play around Satanist iconography, our nation’s history with serial killers, and the omnipresent sense that malice lurks behind the doors of even the most milquetoast, suburban dwellings. But the longer it all unravels, the less it feels likely to be building to a satisfying climax.
When the film takes a left turn and does try to brute-force a killer ending, it flies in the face of all that’s come before it. The film’s die-hard fans and eagle-eyed Redditors will suggest that repeat viewings and slavish attention to blink-and-you’ll-miss-it easter eggs will reveal an ornate tapestry destined to withstand the test of time. (Perhaps they’re even right!)
But on the first watch, it’s difficult to shake the feeling that we’re watching both a celebratory coming-out party for Perkins as a director and empirical proof that his screenwriting requires more polish.
But on the first watch, it’s difficult to shake the feeling that we’re watching both a celebratory coming-out party for Perkins as a director and empirical proof that his screenwriting requires more polish. Visually, he paints a compelling and engrossing picture, but the script that supports it has all the characteristics of a term paper rushed the night before a deadline. In another world, another rewrite or two might have brought the film’s many third-act revelations in line with the picture that precedes them.
Instead, we’re left with an intriguing effort with some solid performances from its cast that fails to end in a manner befitting its auspicious beginning.
“Longlegs” is currently playing exclusively in theaters.
The post ‘Longlegs’ is a strong effort held back from being an instant classic appeared first on Baltimore Beat.