MetheSupreme1’s review published on Letterboxd:
Longlegs (2024)
Directed by Oz Perkins. Notably starring Maika Monroe, Nicholas Cage and Alicia Witt.
Guess who's not going to be sleeping tonight...
PLOT SUMMARY
The FBI are on the tail of a mysterious killer who goes by the killer name of "longlegs", and soon enough, agent Lee Harker comes to be a leading factor in the case mostly due to her sinister intuition which she herself doesn't understand the cause of. A case involving birthdays, coded letters, murder-suicides, the 14th, Satan, dolls, and Harker is able to use her intuition to tie these clues together. But maybe she finds this easy because she's already met Longlegs. Her mother incessantly worries for her sake.
An eerie sound is always in the background of this film; one that lets us know that someone or something's nearby, behind. Behind what? Behind the characters, behind the camera, or maybe even behind the audience, physically, waiting for the right opportunity to possess them with the same magical Satanist voodoo Longlegs uses on his unsuspecting victims in the film, now me the unsuspecting prey. That's the feeling I get watching this film, a fear that's a horror film's job to instill. But maybe it's the film itself that's the dark "voodoo" magic, entrapping me in its world and refusing to let me return until it's finished.
If Osgood Perkins was to re-make "The Silence of the Lambs" as a well-disguised horror film, then the end product would have been nothing like what we're left with now. It's a whole new story, and Maika Monroe is not Jodie Foster, even though she's a female FBI agent hunting for a serial killer; Nick Cage isn't Anthony Hopkins either, he's something more distant from reality. You can tell he's having a blast playing a character that's out of his own skin. Visually, it shares more in common to modern horror films than it does to that film or "The Omen", another influence. It's dark, with a heavy reliance on directional lighting to illuminate or obscure parts of a frame. The use of a wide-angle lens allows for a diverse range of framing options, capturing more visual information which is amply present in the set design. My eyes were perennially scanning the backgrounds of several scenes, looking out for trouble coming from any open door, hallway or window. The scenes where I felt most safe, in fact, were the flashbacks, because they're not as uncertain, being in the past. Jump scares are loud and bombastic but nonetheless poignant.
This film asks us for a few permissions. It asks us to believe first that the voodoo magic I mentioned earlier is real - this is a staple requirement of horror films dealing with paranormal activities. For this, it builds on presumptions - on a belief in God. Perhaps a pure atheist would find this film boring, but a person who believes in really any form of a higher, universal power - be it the forces of God, nature, evolution, time, balance or anything - has the building blocks required to construct the fear of which this film is the architect. Because if there is a higher power, then the possibility of someone being able to control it is a stretch, but the film does well to mask it. After that, being able to believe that the person is able to perform miraculous possessions and have some malicious intent driven by an antichrist to do so is an easy giveaway.
An "almost-masterpiece film", in longlegs lingo, is what this really is. There are a few basic flaws in plot that prevents this from becoming a masterpiece; the first, I've already mentioned - the reliance on the supernatural. A non-linear storyline gives more confusion than intrigue with its repeating flashbacks. It felt like I'd encountered a narrative dump in the beginning of the third act, which seeks to give logic to a nightmare - unnecessary. Then, once again, at the ending, the film makes a leap back into surreality like it's never done before, leaving a lot to ambiguity. There is a further meaning to the ending which would require a detail-oriented analysis to unearth, if one would be so inclined. So the film doesn't live up to the standard of hype delivered by the creative marketing strategy of NEON, which drove many to see the film, but it still does more than just pass as a quality paranormal horror film. Thus the bonkers marketing strategy was both a blessing and a curse.
We're given hints from the beginning telling us where the plot will finally lead, but it's very easy to discard them as irrelevant until the truth is finally revealed. In the course of discussing the development of hints towards a shocking reveal, it becomes necessary to reveal exactly what those hints are and what they lead to. So, consider this as a spoiler warning for only this paragraph. In essence, it's a story about the lengths a mother is willing to go to to ensure the safety of her child. And the sacrifices involved. Here, it's taken to the extreme of heaven and hell after she literally becomes the devil's emissary to protect her child. The most obvious hint for this is given early on - first, during her incessant curiosity in Harker's case and then when she literally tells her child that prayers are of no use. When Harker is taking the abstract imagery test early on in the film, an inverted triangle is labeled by her as "father" - one of the many instances of foreshadowing that reveal just enough so that the moment the truth is found all the hints click together and form a whole.
It's a very sympathetic horror film, showing us the danger (LongLegs) halfway through the film rather than leaving it to the most scary thing of all - the unknown - and somehow still manages to make it shiver me timbers.
QotM (Quote of the Movie)
Longlegs: Oh! There she is! The almost-birthday girl!
