Original caricature by Jeff York of Maika Monroe in LONGLEGS (copyright 2024).
Filmmaker Osgood Perkins has been making a name for himself in the world of horror for 15 years, and his new film LONGLEGS may be his most accomplished work yet. It has its share of flaws, but by and large, it creates a sense of dread as palpable as most any horror film from the last decade. The story focuses on an intuitive new FBI agent named Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) and her pursuit of a serial killer that she believes is the same creep she encountered as a young girl. It’s a simple premise, but pound for pound, this one had me on edge the most since I watched IT FOLLOWS way back in 2014. (Interestingly, that one also starred Maika Monroe. Nice work, Miss Monroe.)
Perkins the writer has delivered a script heavily influenced by THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS as Harker is a both shrewd and naïve new FBI recruit just like Jodie Foster’s Agent Starling in the Oscar-winning Best Picture from 1991. (Monroe’s Harker even has the same mousy brown hair color as Starling. An homage? You bet.) You’ll remember too that Starling’s superior, played by Scott Glenn, doubled as a stand-in father figure to her, and Harker’s dad is long dead here too. Blair Underwood plays her boss Carter and he’s both gruff and caring as well. Carter knows that Harker’s onto something as she seems to have a sixth sense of the serial killer’s motivations and actions. Thus, he lets her lead the way, much to the chagrin of veteran agent Browning (Michelle Choi-Lee).
The serial killer, known as Longlegs, is played by Nicolas Cage in a virtuoso performance. Not surprisingly, his monster is both funny and frightening, but Cage adds nuance to him as well. (This film and PIG are the two high-water marks for the veteran actor this century.) Perkins wisely doesn’t show too much of Longlegs until much later in the film, making him all the eerier because we only have his lilting body language and soft, falsetto voice to go on. Later, when Perkins shows us Longlegs’ face, it’s quite a sight and makes the villain all the more disturbing.
Perkins makes a lot of smart choices like that, not showing him, showing us only quick bits of violence, and framing most of his characters dead center in the frame. That isolates everyone and allows anyone and anything to enter the scene from any corner, ensuring that we dart our eyes around searching for the next horror to enter the shot. So simple, yet so incredibly effective.
Andrés Arochi’s cinematography is also eerily cold and dank whether the scene is indoors or out. Coupled with an insinuating sound design blending perfectly with the sullen score by Zilgi, it makes for a film laden with menace even when everyone is standing completely still. Of course, once Perkins introduces violence or other forms of mayhem into the scenes, we’re left frazzled all the more, but it’s amazing how he can work his audience up merely waiting for bad things to happen.
Perkins gets terrific work from his entire cast too. Underwood has aged into a top-notch character actor. Alicia Witt shines too as Harker’s caring mother, delivering halting line readings that suggest a matriarch both loving and intimidating. Mostly, it is Monroe as Harker who seers into your psyche. Her Harker is frail, haunted, and sad-eyed, like a forlorn Margaret Keane painting. Monroe is gaunt here, her character appearing drawn and exhausted from her tormented youth. And as in IT FOLLOWS, and WATCHER from 2022, Monroe uses her tremulous body language to maximize her character’s vulnerability and draw us in. At times, the performance feels like one you’d find in a silent movie, something akin to Maria Falconetti mining pathos so vividly in the 1920s.
Perkins’ script adds a few too many twists in the last ten minutes, and more than a few times he telegraphs his hand too readily. Still, his direction more than makes up for such narrative shortcomings. His accomplishment is a film you’ll likely want to see more than once – first to experience the unadulterated heebie-jeebies, and second, to study closely just how brilliantly he created them.
