Vik Hughes’s review published on Letterboxd:
This review may contain spoilers.
If Yorgos Lanthamos directed The Silence of the Lambs, this is what it would look like. Also villainizing trans or trans-adjacent characters is so tired, why are we still doing it in the year of our "Mr. Downstairs" lord 2024????
Luckily, we had a great audience for this. I would be sitting at a 1 star without them, I think. Seeing how different people reacted to the mom (religious plant to get into people's homes) ended up being involved was interesting. The social commentary on how religious institutions feed on/off of believers who have blind faith in the church was almost there. I wish they would've made Cage's character into a religious fanatic instead of going down the satanic panic route, tbh.
Cage was incredible, as expected. Honestly he made the movie for me. Give the effects team all the accolades for that prosthetic on his face. It was fucking eerie. The pauses, long shots, and focusing in on micro expressions were also high points.
This was also weirdly funny in a lot of parts I didn't anticipate. Some of the shots (looking inside Lee's house from where she was out investigating the figure she saw in the woods, mom walking up to the agent in the car from behind while at her house, and the framing of the TV behind our main detective when talking to Lee about her past) stand out. The devil under the veil in various scenes was haunting and will probably stick with me the next time I see someone in real life wearing something like that, maybe?
Other than that, it was standard satanic panic schlock with a weird lady lead (can somebody please get that bitch a Prozac and teach her to breath in through the nose and out through the mouth?) There were some fun secondary characters (lots of people of color......) that get killed pretty gruesomely and dispatching her first FBI partner in that way was a great start to the movie. I wish it would've held that tension throughout, though.
And WHY couldn't this Dirty Flirty Angel Bitch -or whatever our magically-no-longer-catatonic friend that ended up going down like Icarus called her - just pop a round off between momma's eyes right upon entering the house to end the fucking satanic cycle? Nut up, loser. Now you've got a traumatized orphan on your hands, good job and good luck, babe!!!
Final thoughts: this was sadly disappointing. Also what the fuck does the name Longlegs even stand for/mean anyway?? It's never explained. If you like satanic panic stories, you'll like this. Same for police procedurals *cough* ACAB *cough*. Honestly this would be ideal to watch with friends on a night in with drinks on a streaming service so you don't go spend your hard-earned money at the theater.
(I'll forever ask for more weird Nicolas Cage, it was just the rest of the movie that I didn't vibe with.)
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