They say 2024 was one of the best years for horror in recent memory. I cant argue with that. In the middle of last year I went into Longlegs without knowing too much about it. Though I must admit the film’s writer and director Osgood Perkins did a pretty good getting me to the theatre in the first place with his Silence of the Lambs inspired trailer about a rookie FBI agent on her first significant case chasing a demonic serial killer. Far from being a cheap imitation, I believe it stand on its own two feet as a nasty little movie. But first I really need to briefly talk about the cryptic Longlegs movie poster I saw walking into the theatre. It still haunts me. It’s one of the best movie poster of 2024 by far.
Anyway, American independent film production and distribution company Neon really went all out to maximise the promotion of this movie. Interestingly it asked Osgood Perkins for permission to “kind of go nuts” to promote it. And it did. It apparently created at least four or five cryptic promotional movie posters that I’m aware of, maybe more and a bone-chilling trailer, all to entice horror fans into the theatre. Anyway, the promotional movie poster that I saw going into the theatre for Longlegs featured American actress Maika Monroe with her right hand wrapped around her FBI issued gun and her left hand over her mouth stopping herself from screaming. Clearly she has seen something that horrifies her, but what? It was somewhere late in the third act that I realised that movie poster was in fact an important scene from the movie which finds Monroe (in character) standing at the window sill of her childhood bedroom looking out onto the carnage that has just unfolded.
Maika Monroe as FBI agent Lee Harker is brilliant. She first got her start in television before making a switch to the big screen. She then cut her teeth on some small roles in many forgettable movies before truly making her mark in horror. From It Follows (2014) to Watcher (2022), she’s created a little niche for herself in horror films as a “final girl”. She has always said her journey down this path was never planned, but when you’re offered engrossing horror roles, you would be mad not to accept payed work. Interestingly upon reading the script for Longlegs, Monroe was immediately struck by the world it was set in, something which eerily reminded her of both The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Se7en (1995). For the record Monroe’s Harker is nothing like Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs. While Starling is tough and determined, Harker is introverted and fearful. Harker is also haunted by her past which affects how she sees the world. Nonetheless, she is a good investigator. Moreover she uses her psychic abilities to help her decipher evidence in the pursuit of the serial killer Longlegs. (We first pick up on her physic abilities early in the film, notably during a canvassing trip with her FBI colleague which goes horribly wrong.)
This chilling horror pits Monroe up against the versatile Nicholas Cage in the role of the film’s most unsettling presence – Longlegs – marking a return to playing a screen villain something that Cage excels at. While some of his more villainous roles of late like Nicky Cage (an exaggerated version of himself) in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022) and Dracula in Reinfield (2023) have been outlandish and played for laughs, there is nothing remotely funny about Cage’s Satan-worshipping serial killer. In collaboration with writer-director Osgood Perkins, Cage decided his character should look nothing like himself. In the film, he is completely unrecognisable as this sad, disfigured loner with pale skin and blonde long hair. (The film’s creators often talk about his look being compared to that of an androgynous ex-glam rocker.) It’s fair to say Cage’s performances are often either hit or miss with audiences, but as Longlegs you can’t fault his commitment to unnerve the audience, as he did to his co-star Monroe.
Starring opposite Nicholas Cage, Monroe repeatedly reported during the promotion of the film that she was banned from meeting Cage on set until their pivotal interrogation scene. The whole thing was set up to preserve an air of mystery around Longlegs and to get a genuine reaction from Monroe upon meeting her co-star in character and full make up. The story goes that when she eventually walked onto the set and Perkins yelled “action” she was completely unnerved by Cage who sat opposite her. “When I walked in and saw Nicholas Cage for the first time as Longlegs” Monroe recalled, “it was a visceral experience I’ll never forget.” Cage frightened Monroe so much that her heart raced a mile a minute. It was apparently picked up by the microphones on set.
One of the criticisms of this dark little movie is that it takes too much time fleshing out its story, but I think that is actually one of its strengths. I really enjoyed its worldbuilding. However, Osgood Perkin’s Longlegs certainly polarised audience upon release, many believing its lack of scary scenes lets it down. But its sinister, surreal, nightmarish atmosphere does more than enough to make this one of the best horror movies of 2024.
Interestingly, Longlegs has a lot of hidden details which you might miss at first. I certainly did but revisiting it on my second and third and more recently fourth viewing, I noticed more and more hidden deep in the background the devil’s shadowy presence. For the record the devil hovers or lurks in the background in at least ten scenes during the movie. He is a creepy fuck often stalking Monroe’s Agent Harker as she investigates Longlegs. In a way it seems like the devil is rooting for her, maybe even going out of his way to point her in the right direction. It wants her to find and arrest Longlegs because it will ultimately lead to a bigger revelation and crime which comes late at the end of the movie. The chilling presence of the devil in the final scenes of the movie is one of its best foreshadowing moments. Moreover it’s worth noting that Agent Harker and the devil have a creepy connection which goes back to her childhood.
The visual style of the film is crammed with Perkins’ signature fingerprints. (He is fast becoming one of today’s most popular horror auteurs. His latest movie is The Monkey.) For instance, in the very first scene Perkins offers up a cryptic and scary first meeting between Lee Harker and Longlegs when she was a kid. (Though we actually don’t know that it’s Harker until later in the film.) It sets up the whole mood of the film, which goes on to explore such themes as buried trauma, mind control and satanism. The latter Perkins presents subliminally and to great effect. Of course, there are many more themes in the film worth unpacking.
Ultimately making sense (or not) of Longlegs’ ambiguous and terrifying ending and or the mystery surrounding the creepy dolls in the film is definitely something that keeps bringing me back to the film. The fact that I’m still thinking about it, probably has everything to do with its terrifying atmosphere and complex themes.
Rearview Mirror 
I loved every moment of this creepy pulpy goofy horror