Writer/Director Oz Perkins’s Longlegs is a procedural waking nightmare starring Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage.
Longlegs is the kind of adroit horror mashup that plays it as straight and lowkey with its horror and dread as any film. The result is a slow-burn descent into the hellish landscape of a killer’s mind and beyond. Few films in 2024 will leave you haunted the way Longlegs will.
Once upon a time in the Pacific Northwest of the 1990s a serial killer known only as Longlegs left the FBI clueless with a series of murders. The only clues left are lifelike dolls and coded messages. Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) has placed young and capable Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) on the case. As she begins to track the killer, Harker begins to realize her haunted childhood may have ties to the killer. Like a slowly tightening noose around her neck, Harker sees Longlegs true intent…
Writer/director Oz Perkins has been working towards this film since his debut (The Blackcoat’s Daughter) and has refined his austere clinical style to perfection with Longlegs. There isn’t a moment wasted, a performance perfectly modulated, an image beautifully composed, or a moment of dread that does not work in the lean 100-minute runtime. Like the best work of David Lynch, Perkins manages to organically understand the mind’s landscape and creates a nightmare that is inescapable in its ability to drown in the darkness of resolute evil.
Perkins coconspirators across the board understand Longlegs tone and striking visuals. The cast and crew have the unique job of balancing Longlegs purposeful style and their own individual ends. Both Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage give amazing performances. Cage continues his showy later career supporting work as Longlegs. Everything is striking and designed to make one uncomfortable in Cage’s performance but always at the service of the film. Monroe’s sullen determined FBI agent is both a homage and completely different than Jodie Foster’s performance in Silence of the Lambs. The way that Monroe is able to invoke the trauma of years without saying a word is the sort of work that indicates the beginning of a special career.
Supporting work by Underwood and Alicia Witt is truly revelatory. Underwood brings grace and humor to an otherwise oppressive film. The heartbreak in Underwood’s performance during his final moments is some of the best of the actor’s career. The same for Witt who has been given a truly eye-opening role as Harker’s mother. Witt’s final moments are sure to turn heads and give her a newfound gravitas.
Longlegs seals its fate as one of the best horror films in recent memory in its final turn and is as dark and foreboding as anything we’ve seen on screen. Oz Perkins has created a lowkey masterpiece of slow-burn evil winning against good.
Writer/Director Oz Perkins’s Longlegs is a procedural waking nightmare starring Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage.
Longlegs is the kind of adroit horror mashup that plays it as straight and lowkey with its horror and dread as any film. The result is a slow-burn descent into the hellish landscape of a killer’s mind and beyond. Few films in 2024 will leave you haunted the way Longlegs will.
Once upon a time in the Pacific Northwest of the 1990s a serial killer known only as Longlegs left the FBI clueless with a series of murders. The only clues left are lifelike dolls and coded messages. Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) has placed young and capable Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) on the case. As she begins to track the killer, Harker begins to realize her haunted childhood may have ties to the killer. Like a slowly tightening noose around her neck, Harker sees Longlegs true intent…
Writer/director Oz Perkins has been working towards this film since his debut (The Blackcoat’s Daughter) and has refined his austere clinical style to perfection with Longlegs. There isn’t a moment wasted, a performance perfectly modulated, an image beautifully composed, or a moment of dread that does not work in the lean 100-minute runtime. Like the best work of David Lynch, Perkins manages to organically understand the mind’s landscape and creates a nightmare that is inescapable in its ability to drown in the darkness of resolute evil.
Perkins coconspirators across the board understand Longlegs tone and striking visuals. The cast and crew have the unique job of balancing Longlegs purposeful style and their own individual ends. Both Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage give amazing performances. Cage continues his showy later career supporting work as Longlegs. Everything is striking and designed to make one uncomfortable in Cage’s performance but always at the service of the film. Monroe’s sullen determined FBI agent is both a homage and completely different than Jodie Foster’s performance in Silence of the Lambs. The way that Monroe is able to invoke the trauma of years without saying a word is the sort of work that indicates the beginning of a special career.
Supporting work by Underwood and Alicia Witt is truly revelatory. Underwood brings grace and humor to an otherwise oppressive film. The heartbreak in Underwood’s performance during his final moments is some of the best of the actor’s career. The same for Witt who has been given a truly eye-opening role as Harker’s mother. Witt’s final moments are sure to turn heads and give her a newfound gravitas.
Longlegs seals its fate as one of the best horror films in recent memory in its final turn and is as dark and foreboding as anything we’ve seen on screen. Oz Perkins has created a lowkey masterpiece of slow-burn evil winning against good.
Longlegs is in theaters July 12th
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