Longlegs
Yo_Roboto

Review by Yo_Roboto Pro

Longlegs 2024

★★★½

Watched 13 Jul 2024

A deranged madman whispering random violence into susceptible ears. Evil spreading like infection. Misery the only mood. A world where no good things are possible.

So all-in-all, a relaxing reprieve from real life.

Contains the kind of stilted acting and camerawork that is de rigueur for arthouse horror these days. Everyone behaves like animatronic aliens who know they're in a carefully curated composition. That kind of stylistic rigidity can work, but I've always been more in tune with more organic formal expression.

Nic Cage walks that same wiggly line he always does, whipping between compelling and distracting from frame to frame. In the end, I have to say… he takes me out of it. I never see him and think anything but "whelp that's Nic Cage absolutely going for it." It's undeniably memorable, but it feels reverse engineered to be so. Like they set out to make an Iconic Horror Villain instead of naturally finding one. They might get there through sheer force of will (and by being in on the joke of his presence), but at times it feels less like a performance and more like a formal application for a Simpsons parody.

But uhhhh… Still really fun creepy horror procedural. Moments of incredible tension and twisted levity. Strongly in tune with Alan Wake 2, for the g*mers out there who know and care.

And shoutout to the ad campaign! 20mil+ for something like this is NUTS. Huge congrats for the non-conventional thinking on the trailers.

Probably like 7.5 from me but I’m rounding up because it was a blissful break from doom-refreshing the news last night. 3.5 for the movie, 4 for the break from reality for something more relaxing.

Let’s see if I can eat anything today.

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