Sata-Nic Cage — Longlegs

Director Osgood Perkins is quite adept at establishing mood. This makes sense, as he’s the son of Norman Bates himself, Anthony Perkins. Despite a relatively small body of work, Oz knows how to use his camera and lighting schemes to properly set the emotional tone. Even lesser works like Gretel & Hansel are still able to leave an impression because of this specialty.

This is the case with Perkins’ latest and most ballyhooed effort, Longlegs. A psychological horror thriller billed as this generation’s Silence of the Lambs, Perkins’ visual style does a lot of heavy lifting to give the viewer a genuinely engaging and eerie experience. This results in a project that is fun on a lot of levels, even if it was somewhat dishonestly marketed. This is not Hannibal Lecter for a new audience, as the story relies far too heavily on supernatural elements and coincidence, but this is still a supremely well-acted affair with star Nicolas Cage giving us a very fun new dimension to his unflappable commitment to whatever role he takes on.

The film begins by paying homage — either intentionally or not — to one of the greatest horror movies of all time, Jaws. Specifically, I’m referring to that film’s necessary but brilliant obfuscation of the monster. At a farmhouse in the 1970s, a young girl notices a strange vehicle parked at her house. Going to investigate, she encounters Cage as our titular serial killer, who in a very odd voice refers to her as an “angel” and “the almost birthday girl,” squatting down just enough to show the bottom of his chin (the makeup job on Cage is Oscar-worthy) before Osgood abruptly cuts to the title card, expanding from a 4:3 aspect ratio into widescreen before we start the story proper.

You’ll notice a lot of possible hat tips to other classics of the genre, including The Silence of the Lambs, as we then meet FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), clearly meant to evoke memories of Clarice Starling. Fresh out of the academy and being treated with a degree of 1990s sexism (including one character asking if it’s scary to be “a lady FBI agent”), she patrols a suburban Oregon neighborhood with her assigned partner (Dakota Daulby), looking for a murder suspect. Through pure intuition, she correctly guesses the house where the killer is hiding, and his arrest leads the Bureau to consider her a possible clairvoyant.

This gets her assigned by her superior, Carter (Blair Underwood), to the Longlegs case. A series of mysterious murder-suicides have taken place over the last two decades, where fathers kill their wives and children, then themselves, with no sign of forced entry, but every scene contains a coded message (a nod to Zodiac) signed by Longlegs. Harker is able to decode the messages and connect the dots between the incidents (9-year-old girls whose birthdays are on the 14th of a given month, with the murders occurring within a week of the child’s birthday on either side), theorizing a motivation of devil worship. As she digs deeper, she realizes she might have a connection to Longlegs, and that he may be stalking her.

Pretty much everyone in this cast does fantastic work. Monroe is still relatively new to the game, having given a competent supporting performance in Greta and starring in Watcher, but she rises to the occasion here, playing a stoic, detached lead that contrasts quite nicely with Cage’s eventual bombast once he’s fully revealed. She also excels as a foil for Harker’s obsessive hoarder mother Ruth, played by veteran Alicia Witt. Kiernan Shipka provides a perfect creep factor in a small role as well. Across the board, everyone plays their part admirably.

This aids in the note-perfect mood that Perkins sets. The camera work from Andrés Arochi is tight and disciplined, with every angle showing exactly what needs to be seen to keep you locked in and nothing more. Perkins furthers this with some expertly juxtaposed color schemes, emphasizing bright whiteness (be it in natural lighting, snow, or Longlegs’ pallid appearance) placed against an almost Suspiria level of Technicolor red. Every set is wonderfully appointed, whether it’s Lee’s spartan living arrangements, Ruth’s collapsing infrastructure, or some nightmare fuel life-size dolls. The score, composed and performed by Perkins’ brother Elvis (who goes by the stage name Zilgi) features a solid mix of modern strings and synth melodies reminiscent of The Shining (if you’re gonna crib from someone, it’s hard to argue against Stanley Kubrick). It all comes together seamlessly to keep the viewer on the edge of their seat.

That said, the more effete praise that the picture has gotten is a bit misplaced, especially the advertising that marked it as the heir apparent to Jonathan Demme’s Best Picture-winning masterpiece from 1991. This is because despite all these great elements, there are two aspects that leave us all wanting. The first is the editing. Greg Ng and Graham Fortin do an adequate job from a technical standpoint, but the more hyperactive moments, including rapid-fire flashbacks to Harker’s past (which necessitate multiple aspect ratio changes and seizure-inducing lights in the cuts) either confuse the plot or make it too obvious, depending on the moment.

The second is the story itself. Don’t get me wrong, the concept is strong, and the basic beats work to a point, but as I noted above, too much of the burden is placed on plot contrivance and outright magic, with no explanation as to how any of it works. How does Harker pinpoint the location of the first killer? How can she use a bible to solve Longlegs’ code in a single night when other experts hadn’t worked it out in 20 years? The dolls have some kind of orb in their head which does… something, and we never understand why. So much is glossed over as worshipping Satan even though that doesn’t adequately explain or justify a single thing. This all leads to a wholly unnecessary and superfluous ending that comes close to undoing the bulk of the goodwill built up over the preceding 90 minutes.

That’s why this doesn’t measure up to The Silence of the Lambs. That film (and I assume the book it was based on) hinges on the relationship between Lecter and Starling, and the former’s ability to teach the latter how to see the bigger picture and figure out the solution. We know that Lecter is a cannibal because he considers so-called “lesser” humans to be a form of cattle, livestock raised for slaughter to feed superiors like himself. Starling has to get into the mind of a killer like Buffalo Bill, using Lecter’s pathology to understand her quarry. One is kept close, the other at a remove, because this is all about learning, intellect, and proving your worth. That’s why Lecter takes a liking to Starling in the first place. He recognizes her potential as an equal, which keeps things grounded in the harshness of reality. It’s a grotesque reality, but it’s real all the same.

Here, we lean far too much into divine intervention (or whatever the hellish opposite of that is). It’s not even misinterpreted influence or belief, but actual powers of darkness and evil. And that just doesn’t mesh with an entity like the FBI that deals in cold, hard facts. This isn’t The X-Files, where someone like Fox Mulder is shunted off to the side to explore his stuff to whatever end (real, supernatural, or extra-terrestrial). This is a prime murder investigation, so even the idea of declaring someone a possible psychic to bring them into the circle is laughable on its face, much less literally chalking up to the sorcery of Beelzebub himself. It’s not satisfying because no one really learns anything, and Harker gains no skills or insight to help her down the road.

More importantly though, all of this religious mumbo jumbo only serves to keep Harker and Longlegs at arm’s length until it’s time for the climax, which is a shame because in their limited screen time together, Cage and Monroe play off each other really well. As we learn more about the killings, there are some fascinating areas to explore, like the dramatic irony (and real-world parallel) of using the assumed largesse of the church to commit atrocities. Longlegs’ off-putting nature in mundane public settings plays into this (there’s a hilarious scene in a general store that illustrates this superbly). Unfortunately, the thread is abandoned in favor of the shock value of the violence, all at the expense of narrative credibility and the chance to build a relationship between Harker and Longlegs that exists in the real space of the plot instead of just references and exposition. In either respect, we’re deprived of a needed human element.

When it’s all said and done though, this is a solid effort and then some. We can easily see how it could have been better, but sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good. I love how well Perkins created the atmosphere of this film. I love how well Monroe handled a very difficult role. I love how well Cage’s manic energy was channeled into yet another instantly memorable character. It’s not a bullseye, and it sure as hell doesn’t get the lambs to stop screaming, but this definitely hits the target and stays with you long after you’ve left the theatre, which for me was 10 days ago.

Grade: A-

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Originally published at http://actuallypaid.com on July 25, 2024.