Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is brought on to a decades-spanning case by Agnet Carter (Blair Underwood) to help investigate a pattern of brutal murder-suicides that are all connected by coded letters left at the crime scene by “Longlegs” but seemingly nothing else.  As Lee gets closer to the killer, she begins to recall memories from her childhood when she may have brushed up against Longlegs (Nicolas Cage) when he visited her at home one winter afternoon.  With the case growing more personal with each uncovered clue and decoded letter, Lee is in a race against time before she becomes Longlegs’ next victim. 

Osgood Perkins II writes and directs his serial killer thriller, Longlegs, for Neon.  At only 101 minutes, the film entertains a lot of ideas while it explores the various tropes and features of the serial killer genre.  Perkins employs an incredible sense of dread across his film, and while the tone is what traps our attention, it is unfortunate that the story is not as robust and fleshed out as to match the overall unsettling nature of the film. 

Leading the charge here is Monroe’s Lee who is shamelessly modeled after Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) in Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991).  Beyond her blunt personality and potential connection to the Longlegs Killer, Lee is also hinted at having some form of clairvoyance which is why she is brought on to the case in the first place.  It helps her to decode the letters left at the crime scenes, but it does not do much to protect her partner, Fisk (Dakota Daulby), who is suddenly dispatched with in the early minutes of the film after knocking on the door to the home which Lee believes their suspect lives.  The point-blank execution is shocking and is Perkins’ warning to audiences that the violence in this film will be swift and direct.  This killing adds context to Lee’s character and asks Monroe to further alienate herself in front of Andres Arochi’s persistent lens.  Lee is an uncomfortable character to begin with, very nervous and awkward, and the framing often finds her sitting just off center or with her back towards a subject to help visually separate her from her environment as if everything around her is beginning to turn sinister as she inches closer and closer to Longlengs.  Whatever sliver of peace she may have had before is interrupted by flashes of red and black where snakes twist and tangle in the formless void or eyes peer back and sear themselves into her conscience. Seeing what she sees helps us sympathize with her more, but it is still a massive ask for a performer to shut themselves off from, while additionally being shut off from, their scene partners and the locations. Nevertheless, Monroe brings an alluring flavor to the performance so that we are captivated by it, and with Perkins’ execution of style, it feels like we are peering through a window and witnessing something we should not be privy to.   

As for Longlegs, Cage is turning in one of his wildest performances but is operating in a brand new register, tapping into something electric and exciting.  We first meet him in the cold open of the film on a wintery afternoon when he approaches a young girl, a young Lee (Lauren Acala), in her yard; seasonally grey and dead.  The scene is framed as a bust shot, but the top of the frame hits just below Cage’s nose while his eerie voice coaxes the young girl that she should not be afraid of him and that he can be trusted, even though he is wearing his longlegs today.  The screen goes red, the tight 1.33 box opens up to 2.35, and the film begins with Longlegs’ presence looming heavy over the drama, but seldom seen.  Pulling again from The Silence of the Lambs, Longlegs is akin to Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in his brief but impactful screen time and also to Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) in his outward presentation.  He also pulls further inspiration, at least structurally, from Psycho (1960), a notable touchstone given it features his father, Antony Perkins, in his most iconic role, Norman Bates. Similarly to how, at the act change, Alfred Hitchcock killed Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane – the draw to the film at the time – so too does Perkins kill off Cage’s character at the halfway point.  It is an incredibly brutal sequence in the interrogation room as Lee questions Longlegs, and having said his cryptic piece in reply, gives his final praise to Satan before smashing his face repeatedly into the table until he is dead.

Cage’s involvement in the film is a strange one, the least of which pertains to his character, but more so how Perkins chooses to deploy him.  Like so many other elements of Longlegs Perkins has a clear and unsettling idea of how it fits into the hollow and bleak worldview of the film, but he is shockingly conservative in how much he gives his audience. On one hand, the less is more approach is often the wiser route to take when dealing with an actor as bold as Cage in a role as bold as Longlegs lest it becomes a parody of itself before the film concludes, but it is almost too brief and it feels underdeveloped because of it. The world here is rich and absolutely could sustain an additional 20 minutes to give better shape to the motivations of these characters. To be cheeky, the devil is in the details, and we are only seeing the broad strokes of this sinister plot. Part of this is because Longlegs is really just the vehicle to get to where Perkins wants to go, but because the character is so captivating and magnetic, we are left wanting more and the ultimate resolution feels softer than the setup. This hunger for more though is exactly what Perkins has cited as a driving motivation for writing and structuring the script the way he did as it came from a place of disgust in how serial killers have become celebrities in their own twisted right, followed intently as their destruction is commodified and eagerly consumed by audiences in true crime series, tabloid styled documentaries, and podcasts. He is denying us that satisfaction so our frustrations with this choice prove his point, but even still, as an audience to a film we want more, especially since this, unlike true crime which can fall under rightfully moral scrutiny, is a work of pure fiction.  

Returning to the case, Longlegs’ affirmations to Satan sets the investigation on a new path, one leading towards a wider sinister plot of the occult, but this is also where Perkins begins to lose grip on his story and it hits much softer than the first half when the intrigue was at an all-time high.  We learn that Longlegs had an accomplice, Ruth Harver (Alicia Witt), Lee’s mother, who bargained her servitude to Longlegs in return for Lee’s safety back when Longlegs visited them at their home.  Her task would be to visit the houses of the victims on their children’s birthdays with dolls – a gift from the church – and inside the doll is a black core that whispers out to the fathers to violently attack their family and then kill themselves.  Witt brings an incredible nervous energy to the film in a way that opens her up for a strange show of empathy from audiences. She is a woman put in an impossible position, with a task that must be executed lest her family be on the receiving end of the torture. This push/pull of not wanting to do something but having to do it allows Witt to display a wider range than she would in a more senseless killing scenario, but Perkins never allows her totally off the hook for making the choices she did, even if they were in service of her and Lee’s own protection. The few flashes of the attacks that she helps to initiate are brutal as the men act off of Satan’s wishes, so it scratches the itch for the gore hounds in the audiences, but it does not deepen its plot as something like David Fincher’s Se7en (1995) does.  More than anything, this plot opens up a lot of loose ends that, while they may go unnoticed in the moment, as audiences begin to reconcile what they just saw, the frays begin to show. The equation can be followed, but the sum is far less than we were anticipating from the start. 

Longlegs starts off so strong that it is one of those stories that is almost impossible to end, and while Perkins struggles to bring this case to a close, the film is never not interesting.  Bolstered by incredible performances across the board and precise moments of sudden bloodshed, the film is always thrilling.  Perkins’ style and control are undeniable, reining in the bold swings of his plot and turning them into something that is creeping and dreadful at every turn. Even as he draws deep from the well of some iconic and beloved films, Longlegs feels fresh and new, and most delightful is that while the story does peddle heavily in parental trauma, the trauma is not the monster.  This is not just another therapy session through cinema, it is a nasty and gnarly story that sinks its hooks into us, and while we squirm as the wounds ooze out and fester, we cannot look away from the depravity on screen. We really are just as disgusting as Perkins thinks we are, and he relishes in getting to hold up the mirror and forces us to look.