The devil is in the details. 

*minor spoilers ahead: it is difficult to discuss this film without talking about how the story unfolds. If you wish to know nothing beforehand, please go see the film then read my review.*

There may be something wrong with Oz Perkins. Throughout his features he has built carefully crafted and composed worlds beset by an ambient dread wherein nothing seems to make sense or add up, but it doesn’t really matter because the unshakably bad vibes are so compelling. There is a strange familiarity lurking behind every corner, a nagging notion that something is inexplicably wrong and it cannot be ignored. In Longlegs, Perkins crafts a nasty, brutish, and short tale of such unpleasant weirdness that by its third chapter, you find yourself looking around in the darkened theater for someone—anyone—to mouth to in bewilderment: “Is this really fucking happening?”

With this film, Perkins is able to back up his house style with a story of substance: a mysterious batch of grisly, familial killings spread across three decades, all unsolvable, all linked by coded letters written by the killer who is somehow never present at the crime scene during the murders. Maika Monroe’s FBI agent Lee Harker—in a truly remarkable performance—is given the unenviable task of finding the elusive killer. Her anxiety-ridden, antisocial behavior is enough on its own to set the movie off on a wrong foot, and as she begins to piece together the horrid puzzle we are treated to reenactments of the murders—a series of painterly though gruesome images that appear timeless, ageless, and without explanation. 

This brings us, of course, to the murderer Longlegs, played with unabashed, horrendous glee by the truly one-of-a-kind Nicolas Cage. I won’t even describe it because it must be seen to be believed. Suffice it to say, we’ve got another all-timer on the books, folks. Oddly, Longlegs becomes an almost incidental character in the film that bears his namesake, as the narrative uncoils to reveal much more about Harker, her mother, and their shared traumatic pasts. 

An increasingly disturbing dilemma starts to drown Harker, reshaping the world around her and us—the viewer—into something neither past nor present, both known and unknown, blurring the already murky meanings of home, family, good, and evil. This is essentially the crux of the film—especially in its third act—and is also the only part that really took me out of it. There is a very specific choice or two made around the hour mark, and some of the resulting revelations feel a bit obvious, heavy-handed, or even corny. By the final minutes, there is a sort of collective (extremely tensed) shrug. We know we’re going to be ok, but are very much not ok. 

However, no story like this, if told well, is ever completely resolved. Ironically, what I like most about the film is also the thing that most annoys me: there are no clear answers. All we know is that it’s all wrong. 

Simply put, Longlegs is one of the best thrillers I’ve seen in years containing my two favorite performances of the year (so far), and has completely made me rethink the music of T. Rex.