It’s been almost ten years since Osgood Perkins, son of the late Anthony Perkins, made his awesomely haunting debut film The Blackcoat’s Daughter. Since then, he’s played around with television and a couple of average movies, but now, he’s back with the much-hyped Longlegs.
Longlegs is about a young FBI agent named Lee Harker (Maika Monroe from It Follows) who, through either intuition or psychic abilities, seems to have an uncanny knack for knowing things. She is assigned to a case involving a serial killer who calls himself Longlegs (Renfield’s Nicolas Cage), and as she gets deeper into the investigation, the killer starts to take a personal interest in her as well. She soon learns that the case is about much more than simply a maniac who murders families.
Oz Perkins lets the viewer know exactly what they’re in for with the pre-credits scene in Longlegs. A young girl wanders outside into the snow and looks around her yard. After showing a couple of shots of empty parts of the landscape, the camera cuts to Longlegs as the musical score shouts a loud, dissonant chord. It’s more startling than scary, but it does pack a punch and sets the tone for the entire movie.
Most of the scares in the movie are constructed this way. They come suddenly with a jump cut and a sting of volume, so they’re more surprising and uncomfortable than actually scary. That’s not to say that they aren’t effective, but they’re a bit cheap in their execution. And that seems to be the point. It’s almost as if Perkins is showing off – you know the jump is coming, and he still gets you.
Longlegs is basically The Silence of the Lambs if Clarice Starling was psychic and Buffalo Bill was into cryptography and the occult. There’s a system and a method to what Longlegs is doing, and he taunts Lee effortlessly and endlessly while he’s doing it, seemingly daring her to catch him. The lo-fi, nineties aesthetic and the overall coldness of the film also help with the Lambs comparison. Longlegs is the B-movie version of the Jonathan Demme classic.
There’s a strange stiffness to Maika Monroe’s performance that, at first, seems like she’s phoning it in with a sterile line reading. But as the movie moves on and more of her background is established, it becomes clearer that her performance is actually brilliant in its subtlety. It’s sort of like Shelley Duvall’s portrayal of Wendy Torrance in The Shining; once you realize the character’s arc and what they’re going through (and what they’ve been through), it changes the whole dynamic of the performance. Monroe’s clinical stoicism has a purpose.
And then, there’s Nic Cage. He makes for a creepy maniac. Even when covered in borderline ridiculous prosthetics and bleach-white makeup, he is able to make the audience’s skin crawl with just his sing-song screamy vocalizations. His awkwardness makes the viewer uncomfortable. It’s a truly unsettling performance that, really, only Nicolas Cage could deliver.
Longlegs is one of those conveyor-belt movies where the audience just hops on and holds on for the entirety of the tension-filled trip, just waiting for Perkins to reveal his next trick. And his next trick is most likely something that even the movie’s psychic main character won’t see coming. While it can’t really be called a “fun” movie, the Longlegs ride sure is entertaining.
GRADE: A
MPAA Rating: R for bloody violence, some language, and disturbing images
Running Time: 1 hour 41 minutes
Release Date: July 12, 2024
Studio: Neon
This post was last modified on February 12, 2026 6:31 pm