Availability: In theaters nationwide. No streaming availability likely for 3-4 months, and then on Hulu, connected to independent producer Neon. See JustWatch here for future streaming availability.
How I … My Mother
“Longlegs” would seem to have the ingredients of a horror film that crosses into the mainstream (“Silence of the Lambs” 1991) or at least a cult production (“Blair Witch Project” 1999). Nicholas Cage, an exciting and unpredictable actor (should’ve had an Oscar for “Pig” [2021]), is the arch-villain Longlegs. An FBI agent on the spectrum who has both guts and trepidation recalls aspects of Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander as well as Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster in “Silence”). Oz Perkins, the son of horror icon Anthony Perkins, writes and directs. The film’s Freudian implications channel Dad’s “Psycho” (1960); both involve mothers.
Oz Perkins, the son of horror icon Anthony Perkins, writes and directs.
Maika Monroe is excellent as Lee Harker, the fearful FBI agent. Unlike Starling, Harker seems ill-suited for her job, precisely because she is so afraid so much of the time (long stretches of her uncontrollable heavy breathing). It’s inconceivable the Bureau would hire her, except for her psychic powers, of which they had no knowledge.
It's to Maika Monroe's credit that the film works at all. Here she appears—as Lee Harker, FBI agent—to have been splattered by blood. It's everywhere, including her chest. But her blouse is pristine white. Is this comedy? Or a badly produced film?
Left alone to navigate the world of a serial killer, Harker is radically isolated in a rural environment; she has no partner, friend, close colleague, or father. One odd scene has her sitting in a large leather chair at a club about 6 feet from her boss (Blair Underwood playing a stock character), while they discuss confidential information, the distance a sign of Harker’s lack of connection to him, or anyone else. She talks to her mother on a large, black, 1990s-era “portable” phone.
The rural setting adds to FBI agent
Lee Harker's (Monroe) isolation.
A female, alone.
Isolation of the potential victim, make that female victim, is a familiar trope in horror films (2022’s “Barbarian” and “God’s Country”). It’s to Monroe’s credit that the film works at all. She holds it together through her intense, interior screen presence and her reactions—triggering audience reactions—to an unpredictable soundscape and ever-present peril.
The story is weighed down by its over-determined quest for meaning,
Perkins raided the horror-film fridge for other themes common to the genre: the Faustian bargain, the menacing figure of an adult whose development was arrested as a child, the naïve female protagonist, the complexity of memory, mother-daughter tension, the pathology of hoarding, Satanism, even evil dolls made by Longlegs in (where else?) a basement. The result is a story weighed down by its over-determined quest for meaning, an overladen table of multiple and intersecting causes of the killer’s motives and the detective’s mental processes. Perkins has thrown a lot at the wall and hoped some of it would stick.
Nicholas Cage is unrecognizable as
arch-villain Longlegs, sometimes
not even shown in full-face.
Weaknesses in the script abound. What FBI agent lets another agent, without backup, enter a house likely inhabited by a killer? Would the Bureau allow Harker to interview Longlegs alone, and in close proximity, when no one else is even around (the precautions taken for Starling’s interviews with Lecter, including his mouth cage, enhanced the story)? Some of those weaknesses could be for comic effect: Longlegs, alone on a country road, at a remote bus stop, a suitcase in each hand, as police cars pour in from all directions, ala 1977’s “Smokey and the Bandit.” It’s meant to be funny. An attempt at humor may also account for Harker running out of bullets at a crucial moment, as if she were in a B-movie Western. When the obvious victim says “we’ll be back” and the obvious killer responds “I’ll be back,” you might think you’re in the writers’ room of a failing sit-com.
The combination of horror/occult and comedy is a winning one these days. Longlegs’ $22 million domestic box office on its opening weekend (on a reported $10-$16 million budget) set a record for independent producer Neon. Yet Perkins is not fully in command of his material, and Cage isn’t on screen enough to establish either the menace or the appeal of Hannibal Lecter or The Joker. His role here is as a come-on for movie-goers who respect him for his craft.
While satisfying some fans, the film won’t place high in the canon, and the character Longlegs is unlikely to join the list of iconic villains.
Date: 2024
Director: Oz Perkins
Starring: Nicholas Cage, Maika Moore, Blair Underwood
Runtime: 101 minutes
Country: Canada, United States (filmed in British Columbia)
Language: English
Other Awards: None to date
As always, a clear, interesting, and informative reviews in which sound and sober judgment is buttressed by allusions to related cinematic attempts that help convey where you guys are comping from. Always a good read! Thanks