My Review of Longlegs (2024)

 

Written And Directed by Osgood Perkins

Longlegs: "Let me in now, and it can be nice! Make me go now, and I'll have to come back! Not once, not twice, but as many times as I like!"

For one of the most hyped original horror movies of the year, I didn't rush to see this and I managed to largely avoid spoilers for it as well. Was it worth the hype? I got to be honest, I'm not entirely convinced.

First of all as much as it's a horor movie,it's also something of a murder mystery to boot. You've got the main antagonist in question - a creepy, pale skinned serial killer named Longlegs (Nicolas Cage). There's no particular backstory to that name choice by the way. 

Anyways the movie opened with Longlegs encountering a young girl (Lauren Acala) on her ninth birthday. It's an encounter she survived but changed as she grew up to be FBI agent Lee Barker (Maika Monroe). In her current time, Lee's desperately trying to track down Longlegs from completing his deadly triangle of family related murders.

During the movie, Lee not only had to contend with the estranged relationship between herself and her mother, Ruth (Alicia Witt) but also her superior, Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) as well as his wife Anna (Carmel Amit) and daughter Ruby (Ava Kelders). As a unit, they were next on Longlegs list of families to destroy.

The connections that are made between Longlegs and Agent Harker aren't too surprising but they're executed decently enough for the third act to work along with the reveal of his accomplice at the last minute. There's also a very underrated performance from Kiernan Shipka as one of Longlegs survivors. I thiught her scenes were particularly delightful. 

As a merging between horror and crime, I did feel like parts of the movie could have been better. Both Nicolas Cage and Maika Monroe give good performances but the former's capture and death felt somewhat anticlimactic. I did however like the references to the Devil but subtle they weren't.

- Longlegs real name was revealed to be Dale Kobble in the movie. Osgood Perkins is the son of Anthony Perkins.

- The end credits scrolled down instead of up, which was an interesting gimmick for the movie.

- Satan himself did appear a lot throughout the movie. It wasn't subtle but it was handled well.

- Chronology: It was 1974 at the start of the movie before moving into the early 1990s. Victims were usually nine years old and born on the fourteenth day of the month.

Longlegs was a bit of an oddity for me. I didn't love it as much as I wanted to but I certainly liked it and appreciated a lot of what director Osgood Perkins was going for. There's certainly strong performances from the leads and it's unsettling overall but didn't entirely click for me.

Rating: 7 out of 10