#54: Longlegs
Release Date: July 12th, 2024
Format: Theater (at Regal Edwards Cerritos in Cerritos, CA)
Written by: Osgood Perkins
Directed by: Osgood Perkins
3 Stars
It seems fitting to compare Longlegs to another independent horror movie starring Maika Monroe that I rewatched about a week ago, It Follows. This will be a genuine comparison, as I’ve been mulling over Longlegs since watching it and I really don’t know exactly how I think about it. Since I’ve seen It Follows several times and gave it 3.5 stars recently, maybe this comparison will be beneficial.
Longlegs is the scarier flick. That may be a simplistic assertion, but hey, we’re comparing scary movies here. Let’s work from big to small. Being scary is important, and although It Follows is a creative mindworm, Longlegs is the scary one. The opening scene, shot in a square aspect ratio and showing the titular character Longlegs from the chin down, is dreadful. It looks unpleasant and hints at the macabre nature of the rest of the film. Later in the movie, Monroe’s character Lee is looking through a trunk of childhood items and there is a brief cutaway to a series of images that scared the absolute shit out of me in the theater. I don’t remember what the images were exactly since it happened so fast and unexpectedly, but I’m looking forward to seeing the movie again so I can piece them together.
Longlegs is better acted, with a more experienced director and a slightly - but impactfully - bigger budget. I wrote in my review of It Follows that I can see performances that border on amateurishness, and you can really see the reported $1.6 million budget stretched to its maximum. A critical take might be that it looks like a well-executed student film, albeit with an excellent plot conceit. In contrast, there is nothing bordering on amateurishness with the performances and direction of Longlegs. Maika Monroe is commanding - more so here than in It Follows - and Nicolas Cage gives the gonzo performance that you’re hoping for. Also, writer and director Osgood Perkins works from visual motifs that maximize the unsettling tone of his script. Interior shots typically have a sinisterly suggestive door or window in the background of the frame; exteriors feel claustrophobic, capturing the low cloud cover that engulfs the Pacific Northwest in winter.
It Follows is more creative, and might have the more impactful legacy over time. Not to say that Longlegs isn’t creative, but it wants (needs?) a shock value at the end that It Follows has no interest in.
But all of these comparisons are avoiding my main criticism of Longlegs, and that is that I’m not sure what horror genre rulebook it’s playing by. It seems to be synthesizing a few different horror/thriller genres into one, but that is a double-edged sword. On one hand it allows Osgood Perkins to take his script to unexpected places, both tonally and narratively, but it also allows him to take short cuts. I don’t mean to sound like Jamie Kennedy’s character from Scream, but there are rules in horror movies, and Perkins’ script breaks a few of them. Allow me to attempt to explain:
In the beginning of the movie I think even Perkins would admit that he’s openly borrowing from Silence of the Lambs: A talented, young female FBI agent is coerced into dangerous work by an older and more experienced male superior; it seems pretty Clarice Starling to me. But then Perkins’ script reveals that the FBI is interested in her mainly because she seems to have clairvoyant abilities. Here the script diverges away from the verisimilitude of Silence of the Lambs and starts embracing a more Stephen King-esque, supernatural genre quality. I think that’s fun. I’m still in. But as the movie unfolds, his crime thriller/supernatural hybrid attaches elements of backwoods horror. And then it attaches elements of satanic horror. And finally it attaches elements of possession horror. Unlike Late Night With the Devil, I don’t think Longlegs is blatantly ripping off existing horror classics, but I do think it’s playing fast and loose with the rules of horror to the point where it might be compromising its narrative integrity. By the end of the movie, I was a bit in the dark as to just what is and is not possible in the reality in which the story takes place.
But it didn’t turn me off from the movie. In fact, D and I sat around for twenty minutes and analyzed what we just watched. I have a hard time giving any movie fewer than 3 stars if you look forward to talking about it afterwards, but am I ready to say that it’s better than It Follows? I’m not so sure. Am I saying it’s worse than In a Violent Nature, which I gave 3.5 stars? I suppose I’m getting to the problematic nature of quantifying a movie’s quality with stars (it’s kind of all bullshit). So what am I saying exactly about Longlegs?
It’s scary. It has great performances and technical qualities. And as a means to an end, the script takes some horror genre shortcuts that mostly pay off.
