Mark Loebus’s review published on Letterboxd:
Coming out of this film, I came out disappointed and it’s not really the movies fault, but the marketings. And it’s not the case that it was false advertising or anything, but I loved the marketing so much that my expectations of this were unrealistically high and this film is mostly fine, but I thought that this was going to be the film of the year.
Let’s start off with the positives, because the movie is genuinely good, but I was hoping for more. The cinematography is incredible and unsettling, using lots of different aspect ratios and tricks to make the film unique. The acting is wonderful, with Maika Monroe being great as the weird lead, Nicolas Cage as the mostly haunting Longlegs and Blair Underwood offering some comic relief. The scares are also well done with a lot of stuff going on in the background.
One problem I had was that it showed too much of Longlegs which made him less scary. I loved that the marketing hid how Nicholas Cage looks and in the beginning of the film it only shows you bits and pieces of him which is really effective but then all of the sudden they just reveal him and especially the scene in the grocery store and the singing scenes „dehorrified“ him for me. Of course there are still some great scenes where he is still horrifying but with the mystery revealed so soon it wasn’t as scary anymore.
The case as well was too simple for me which is basically cracking a language code and I was hoping for something more complex. I can’t really say a lot without spoiling. Also the score is very basic and I think a film like this has the potential for a great unique score.
