The most anticipated horror film of the year—or at least of the past week, because this film seemed to come out of nowhere. One would think the sales might benefit from a longer lead time, but it’s doing great in the box office. The only things people want to see in cinemas these days anyway are horror flicks and, inexplicably, the Despicable Me films. Nicholas Cage produces and plays the title character of Longlegs, a serial killer in a powdered wig and a white satin waistcoat. That’s enough to get anyone to the cinema. The word was Nicholas Cage is actually scary this time—not like his Wicker Man days. We all know he can go too far.
The film is scary, and the premise is an exciting one. A rookie FBI agent hunts a serial killer who’s been at large for decades, and whose cryptic messages have evaded every veteran cop. Maika Monroe plays Lee Harker, the disturbed but brilliant young agent whose psychic abilities have fast-tracked her to the top of the Bureau. All she needs are the creepy letters the serial killer left at the crime scenes, and a book called A Guide to the Nine Circles of Hell, and she’s off. She quickly cracks the secret code, and soon can predict the killer’s next move and also understand what drives him. Unlike Hannibal Lecter, I guess Longlegs doesn’t require much analysis. Lee also concludes that Longlegs couldn’t possibly have done his dirty work alone. He must have had an accomplice. But who? Perhaps the inverted triangles and 666s everywhere are a tip-off.
And why is he called Longlegs? Surely a question for which we deserve an answer, but it never comes. This is an indication of a wider problem—the film doesn’t quite know what it wants to be. Writer and director Osgood Perkins (son of Anthony Perkins, ie Norman Bates from Psycho) has bravely combined the serial killer genre with some satanic business, but ended up with too many dangling threads. How did Lee Harker get her psychic powers? What do the periodic red-filtered images of snakes mean? How long are we going to have that tight aspect ratio? Actually, I quite liked the aspect ratio, but I am perplexed by the other questions. Perkins has shot some brilliant images; two shafts of golden light glare down from barn windows like eyes; the figure of a little girl in snow stands and watches a stranger’s station wagon parked in her drive; and the dolls. Oh, those dolls. Perkins isn’t afraid to use cliches when they work, like the rumbling, thunderous sky that looms as the FBI agents visit a psych ward. But there are cliches he didn’t need. The psych ward, for instance. The inmate, Carrie Ann, is patient zero of the killing spree, and the only survivor of a Longlegs visit. Ever since her family was murdered, a dozen more have suffered the same fate, and always in the same manner: the father inexplicably kills his wife and children, then himself. There is no DNA, no sign of forced entry, indeed no sign that anyone was there at all. Maybe there wasn’t…It’s gripping stuff, at first. But our heroine discovers her culprit early on, and I’d rather liked to have seen how—all we get are a few shots of her jotting down phrases from the code she cracked. Half the fun of these kinds of films is watching the police work out the hidden messages left by the psycho, but this bit is finished halfway through. Longlegs is apprehended and taken into custody. Maybe that’s exactly what he wanted…
Longlegs is an homage to The Silence of the Lambs in disguise. It mimics so much of that film’s classic setups—the young, haunted FBI agent getting inside the mind of the killer while also trawling through her own trauma; the killer’s capture which turns out to be a trap; and the killer himself, a dead ringer for the Buffalo Bill guy from Silence. Longlegs has got the same kind of studio/basement where he does creepy arts and crafts—not sewing this time, but doll-making. He also has Buffalo Bill’s singsong voice and the unsettling habit of talking to someone who’s not there. But what worked spectacularly in Silence misses the mark here. There’s just too much Nicholas Cage. The Buffalo Bill killer was terrifying because we saw so little of him. Longlegs chills at first, but there are a too many closeups of his weird waistcoat and Botoxed lips to keep the fear alive.
There are some skilled performances, especially from Monroe, who can pull off a solo scene in silence and still make us jump. Alicia Witt also stands out as Lee’s eccentric mother. It only takes one look at her long, drawn face and ancient cardigan to know something’s off. Nicholas Cage is Nicholas Cage—almost genius in his pure lack of inhibition, but sadly, his psychotic rantings are another cliché this film would do better without.
