Anyone familiar with me knows that I love horror. Specifically I love horror that plays into the elements of a thriller, building suspense not through jumpscares or winding music cues but through this ever unfolding sense of mystery, weather it be characters trying to figure out how they got in the situation ala Cabin in the Woods or an actual unfolding mystery to be solved like Oz Perkins’ latest film, Longlegs. 

Before release, I avoided as much of the marketing I could when it came to Longlegs. It was a movie that interested me but the marketing was very much up-selling this as the scariest movie to ever do it. Do I fault the marketing team for doing this? No, not at all, at the end of the day this is their job and they did it well because my early release show at 7 P.M. on a Thursday was packed full of couples excited to see this low budget horror thriller amalgamation in a summer full of highly anticipated films. Within the last month alone we’ve had Inside Out 2, the prequel to A Quiet Place, as well as the recently released Maxxxine, and within the next month we will see Twisters (which I am admittedly excited for), Deadpool and Wolverine (this not so much), Alien: Romulus, Trap, and Cuckoo. Needless to say, this summer is packed for not just movies in general but specifically horror and thrillers which makes my preview showing of Longlegs being packed that much more surprising. 

Pre-release aside, Longlegs may not be the scariest film of all time like much of the marketing suggests but it truly is terrifying in the way that it builds tension throughout the entire runtime. I don’t believe that the film has a single moment of levity, even when characters are doing something as simple as talking to one another, you are always left feeling uneasy. A film being ‘scary’ is such a loose term and people tend to get lost in the meaning, I’ve seen countless people online say that the film isn’t ‘scary but it’s tense’ as if scary is something that is measurable in comparison to tension when in I believe that the ‘scariest films’ are the ones that are the most tense. 

Longlegs masterfully uses this tension throughout its runtime to build this ever unfolding mystery and the entire time I couldn’t stop finding similarities between Longlegs and last year’s Alan Wake 2 from Remedy Games. Both projects revel in this adoration of the oddly specific genre of ‘police mystery thriller’ akin to True Detective, Twin Peaks, Sev7n, X-Files, Fargo, and the list goes on. Whereas Alan Wake 2 stops to smell the maple trees and that helps build the tension in it’s pacific northwest inspired town of ‘Bright Falls,’ Longlegs instead uses Oregon and the pacific northwest as a backdrop to build on its overtly religious overtones and eerily creepy environments. The Pacific Northwest just has this allure to it that somehow lends itself to a FBI horror-thriller like Longlegs. This is a spoiler-free review of the film so I won’t indulge in any spoilers, but the film’s mystery is a good one as the twist is one that I personally didn’t see coming but in retrospect is heavily foreshadowed throughout the runtime, leaving you on your toes throughout but not giving away its secrets.

But what good is a mystery without good performances to back it up the intrigue. In the case of Longlegs, the performances here are all excellent. Maika Monroe stars as the lead “Lee Harker” and she steals the show. She very much reminds me of Saga Anderson, again from Alan Wake 2, they are eerily similar in the way that the entire time we are not only left with the mystery of the plot but the mystery of Lee, she clearly has a bigger role in the story that neither the audience or she quite knows about. Lee’s general confusion allows the audience to get lost in the case just as she does, we don’t see her every breathing move in solving the case but at the same time, the film rarely leaves her perspective, we only leave her perspective when it’s explicitly vital to the story and it probably lasts no longer than 5 minutes. 

Nicholas Cage was naturally a huge part of the marketing since he’s a major name attached to such a small film and he is amazing as the titular Longlegs. He has this strange aura around him that feels almost close to home in a way. His performance feels like something that a lot of people have had experience with in their lives at one point or another. Obviously most people haven’t dealt with a serial killer with a pale face but everyone has had experience with a truly strange individual that has stuck with them and I feel as though Nicholas Cage completely takes this idea and cranks it up to 10 to portray the killer Longlegs. The film utilizes its small cast to tell a concise mystery without adding too many elements to potentially throw the audience off by instead having mystery be almost entirely dedicated to the plot. 

A common sentiment from the film's detractors is that it is essentially a worse collage of much better films and I feel as though that comes from a misunderstanding of the film’s goal. I feel like this is obvious, but this isn’t supposed to be a replacement to films like Silence of the Lambs, Longlegs wears it’s inspirations as a symbol of adoration, a new take on these beloved concepts. Longlegs has enough substance to stand on its own, you don’t need knowledge of the inspirations to enjoy the film, but thinking Longlegs is trying to BE something that it clearly isn’t is a one way ticket to not enjoying it. 

Overall, I truly think Longlegs is truly one of the year’s best and in a year not even half way over with films like Dune: Part Two, Furiosa, and Challengers, I think Longlegs stands as not only a great film, but an outstanding horror flick that I’m already desperate to see again. It’s outstanding early success for NEON goes to show that Longlegs is clearly doing something right which is reflected in both its early commercial and critical success. If you haven’t seen Longlegs, make time to do so if you are a horror film you don’t want to miss out.