Though the strangeness of “Longlegs” may not suit everyone, director Osgood Perkins creates an impressively cold, stark landscape for his film about an FBI agent’s search for a serial killer. Getting Nic Cage to play your serial killer may seem like a coup, but Cage’s cuckoo is nothing new.
For die-hard horror fans, “Longlegs” has a lot to offer. Apart from being the son of fave “Psycho” Anthony Perkins, actor-turned-director Osgood’s directed a couple of interesting fright films in “The Blackcoat’s Daughter” and “Gretel & Hansel.” “Longlegs” also stars Maika Monroe, who’s a modern scream queen with “It Follows” and “Watcher” under her belt. Together, Perkins and Monroe team up for “Longlegs:” while it might use “The Silence of the Lambs” as its template, its atmosphere smacks of “Twin Peaks” with an emotionless oddness that serves to accentuate its strangeness.
The movie starts with a little girl being stalked by a man in a station wagon. When the girl confronts the stranger, we get our first glimpse of what’s been happening in the small towns around Oregon. For a 30-year period, families have suffered mass murders when the fathers of the households wipe out their families before killing themselves. Each crime is connected by letters left at the scene, someone using symbols as their message and signed with the name ‘Longlegs.’ By having the fathers of the families murder their own and then kill themselves, Longlegs seems to orchestrate the crimes yet remain invisible to evidence at the scene- apart from the letters.
Enter FBI agent Lee Harker (Monroe), whose appearance seems like a Clarice Starling clone. While canvassing a neighborhood for a criminal, she tells her partner which house they will find the perp. Not calling back-up on a hunch, the partner finds she’s right. After a quick debriefing, her superior Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) recognizes her psychic ability and puts her to work on the coldest of cases: Longlegs.
The procedural Lee Harker undertakes feels like the kitchen sink of profiling. Lee begins deciphering the letters and soon discovers a precise cycle in each of the family slayings: the killings coincide to days within the birthday of one of the young girls living in the home. Investigating the scene of a Longlegs slaying, Harker finds a life-size doll of a little girl; interviewing a little girl who survived Longlegs, Harker discovers Longlegs has written Harker’s name in the facility’s ledger of visitors.
Suddenly, Harker has an epiphany. It’s no accident she’s been able to decipher Longlegs’ killing cycle or discover the doll. As the ledger indicated, Longlegs knows Harker’s name. Why did he leave the letters? To Harker’s horror, Longlegs has lured her all along. Subconsciously, Harker realizes she and Longlegs have a connection.
Of course we meet Longlegs and its Nic Cage. While some have gushed over his performance, I found nothing I haven’t seen before and done better. Compared to his Castor Troy in “Face/Off” where he plants a bomb and then runs to join a choir and maniacally sings while caressing the bottom of the young choirgirl, his Longlegs is a let-down. As Longlegs, Cage shrieks song lyrics once again but his odd and aged albino look is only creepy in its resemblance to Marilyn Manson. Had Cage chosen to have Longlegs speak Swedish for no apparent reason- now that would have been scary. Of course if I’d been asked to play a Satan-worshipping doll maker, I don’t know what character choices I would have made apart from the tried-and-true.
If there are weaknesses in “Longlegs,” they’re all story related. While I have nothing against using doll makers or hypnotic metal orbs to make mischief, I’ve always felt the devil had better tricks to secure servants. On the plus side, the film’s got nice supporting turns from actors Alicia Witt as Harker’s mother and Kiernan Shipka as Longlegs lone survivor.
Again, it’s not for everyone. However, in depicting the occult with an oddness that feels like originality, “Longlegs” does more right by not bending to conventional fright.