Longlegs
Booligan 🛸

Review by Booligan 🛸 Patron

Longlegs 2024

★★★

Watched Jul 23, 2024

Longlegs: "I'm sorry, it seems I wore my long legs today. What happens if I just..."

NEON created a phone number (458-666-4355) that plays a disturbing message from Nicolas Cage as Longlegs, and it still works. Oz Perkins requested that Nicolas Cage wouldn't be used on the posters or in the trailers despite him playing the titular character, so NEON had to come up with creative ways to promote and sell the movie without depending on Cage. One of those was to have Maika Monroe kept completely in the dark over co-star Nicolas Cage's transformation as the serial killer, Longlegs, and had never seen Cage in character until they shot the interrogation scene during Cage's final day on set.

Longlegs: "Daddy! Mommy! Un-make me, and save me from the hell of living!"

While filming the scene, Monroe wore a microphone on her shirt, which, along with her dialogue, managed to capture her heartbeat. Monroe's initial resting rate was 76 BPM. When the scene ended, it spiked to a rate of 170 BPM. This was used in a final promotion trailer. Monroe revealed in an interview, "It was insane. It was absolutely insane! As you know, he completely transformed. There's no trace of Nic in there—his voice, his mannerisms. He was very methodic on this. So it was in character, and it's a very disturbing character, to say the least."

Lee Harker: "I never said my prayers... never once. They scared me."

I'll agree with Maika that Cage is disturbing as Longlegs, and he's very transformative (usually), but there's two times he goes full Nic Cage, and I won't lie, those moments took me out of it a bit and lowered the creepiness factor for me. Regardless, the very successful marketing campaign for this made a mostly unknown low-budget indie horror film a surprise hit for NEON, as it's now their 2nd most successful movie behind Parasite. My theater was almost sold out, and I rarely see that in general these days, but never for an indie horror movie at 2 PM on a Tuesday. The marketing and early hype created sky-high expectations that weren't quite met for me, and that always leads to some disappointment, but this is still a very good serial killer horror film.

What's your favorite 2024 horror film so far❓

Longlegs: "I know you're not afraid of a little dark. Because you *are* the dark."

⏳ Runtime: 96 mins/1 hr 36 mins (without credits)
🎬 Distributor: NEON
💲 Budget: $3 million
💯 Ratings: Letterboxd- 3.5/5, IMDb- 7.2/10, Rotten Tomatoes- 86% critics & 62% audience, Metacritic- 77/100 MetaScore & 6.2/10 user score, CinemaScore- C+

NEON Ranked 🎬🥇
Nicolas Cage Ranked 🥇🥈🥉
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