It happens approximately around once a year. You’ve all seen it, that quote on the year’s most anticipated horror film that usually reads something like “The most terrifying film I’ve ever seen” or dropping similar endorsements that suggest that you’re 100% guaranteed to shit your pants within the first twenty minutes or its the scariest film in at least ten years when reviews said the exact same thing around twelve months prior.
It’s not like I have a problem with horror getting a good press – after all, after growing up in the 80s and 90s, the genre used to be positively starved of positive headlines from snooty reviewers – but I often feel that slapping a good slice of hyperbole on the one sheet often draws in viewers whose idea of true fear may stop at popcorn spilling loud noices and doesn’t even begin to appreciate dread laden atmosphere, big ideas and a station wagon full of very aggressive weirdness.
So let me start my review with a quote that’s a little less flashy and a lot more helpful. Longlegs may not grab you with paralyzing fingers of sheer terror – but it is magnificently bizarre and really fucking cruel.
Sometime during the 1990s, newly-recruited, fledgling, FBI agent Lee Harker seems to have been put on the Clarice Starling Fast-Track Programme after her near-psychic intuition manages to help her nail a hidden killer seemingly out of thin air. As a “reward” for her clairvoyance, she’s quickly shuffled onto an open case that concerns a decades old spate of murder/suicides that come accompanied by coded letters that are all signed with the same name. Longlegs.
Seen as something of a terrible enigma by the Bureau, no one to date has been able to figure out how he’s making people suddenly slaughter their own families without even being present or even how to decode his garbled messages, however, not long after being assigned to the case, Lee soon gas a breakthrough after being visited by a sinister stalker.
The next thing you know, Lee and her superior, Agent Carter (no, not that one) are suddenly catching up on cases and fact that have lain dormant for over twenty years that contains everything from a rare survivor who suddenly has come out of a catatonic fugue state, to hidden compartments that reveal creepy-ass, lifesize dolls that look unsettling like the girls from the slain families.
But the more Harker and Carter uncover, the most nebulous Longlegs becomes. What does all of his Satanic screenings signify? What is the purpose of the strange, hollow, empty sphere found in the head of one of the dolls? How does he get people to kill their loved ones? What is his obsession with T-Rex? As the questions mount, Harker believes that the only way this lunatic can do what he does is with an accomplice, but who could work with someone as ungodly as Longlegs?
Now that my little rant is out the way, I guess it’s time to get my hands bloody and while Longlegs may not be the scariest thing since sliced bread, it’s certainly worth a watch as it is the most quietly unsettling thing I’ve seen all year. Maybe it’s because I caught a screening after only snagging a mere four hours sleep the night before (arguably the best state to watch any mind fucking horror/thriller in), but much like the eponymous Longlegs himself, I found the movie creeping its way into the deep recesses of my mind and sitting there like an unpaying lodger. Thanks to director Osgood Perkins’ dedication to stubbonly refusing to give you anything in this movie that’s even remotely reassuring, the cold, stark chills this film pumps out almost makes it feel like David Lynch was trying his hand at some sort of Silence Of The Lambs style chicanery. The director (who, fittingly, is the son of Anthony Perkins) uses negative space and switching aspect ratios to create a beguilingly alien landscape out of 1990s Oregon that mostly comes from the fact that Maika Monroe’s FBI newbie spends the majority fixing everyone and everything with a near permanent deer-in-the-headlights expression. When your lead character is this jittery, even before the serial killer stuff starts zeroing in on her, you can’t help but be kept in a prolonged state of unease. Monroe, definately sealing her fate as a neo-scream queen to be reckoned with after the likes of It Follows and The Guest, manages to portray this fragile exterior without making her seem weak or (worse yet) irritating and at times, her agonisingly awkward social unease becomes oddly endearing. However, if Monroe plays something of a left-field type of lead, the incomparable, uncontrollable, inconceivable Nicolas Cage turns in possibly his most unhinged, unrestrained performance yet as the titular Longlegs.
For a while now, Cage has shifted by into producing and starting in offbeat indie projects that suit his more… shall we say, extreme choices, far better than some of his big budget stuff and it’s a struggle to imagine what other kind of movie could possibly contain his truly deranged performance. Shuffling onto screen with lank, white hair, pale skin and a puffy, slug-lipped visage that looks for all the world like the bloated corpse of T-Rex frontman Mark Bolan – which, of course, is no accident as the movie is randomly infused with numerous, bizarro, glam-rock influences. There’s an argument to be made that maybe Cage takes his particular brand of panto ranting a bit too far and after witnessing him screeching rock lyrics in his car while looking like an albino James May, you could be inclined to agree, but while everyone has their own favorite era of Cage, I have to say that Indie Horror Producer Cage might be my favorite so far…
Aside from people taking the hype way too literally, some who prefer their serial killer movies a little more grounded by be thrown by the introduction of some supernatural elements including Satanism, clairvoyance and even subtle mind control that all assume you’ll be cool with some legit fantastical horror being very present and correct. But Perkins merges it all together in a way that proves to be ambient assault on the senses that keeps you on edge by continually reminding you that things are very much not ok.
While probably not the horror home run the ad men would have you believe (for example, I wouldn’t rate it over, say, Barbarian or X), Longlegs is still a great, anxiety inducing ride that gets the best out of its two leads, some resplendently atmospheric direction and a genuinely strange plot that whips out an ever more extravagant set of twists that lead to its take-no-prisoners ending. Plus its use of T-Rex is pretty fucking sweet too.
Daddy Longlegs.
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