For a film about a serial killer hunt, Longlegs exudes a bit too much bizarreness. We catch a glimpse of the titular killer right from the start. And, boy, that weird imagery sticks with us, staying at the back of our minds like a portrait that keeps staring back at us even when we look away. It’s like a sinister force lurking behind the camera; we cannot always see the harrowing figure, but its presence never disappears. That’s the atmosphere Oz Perkins aims to instill throughout the entire film.
Credit to Nicolas Cage, who portrays Longlegs, an enigmatic killer terrorizing Oregon’s suburban families with an excruciatingly baffling MO. It’s a briefly shocking appearance in a quiet yet effective opening scene that feels like it’s straight out of a nightmare. While being almost unrecognizable under prosthetics and haunting makeup, we know it’s Cage. The film introduces us to his world and the world of everyone tormented by his character’s deeds. This is a world that feels aggressively detailed yet empty and jarring in every corner—a place that transports audiences into liminal spaces.
Into the Liminal Space
Longlegs fast-forwards several years after the opening sequences when we’re introduced to Lee Harker (Maika Monroe, It Follows), a rookie FBI agent tasked with hunting another serial killer. On her first assignment, she demonstrates an inexplicable quirk that suggests clairvoyance in capturing the fugitive. This mystifying eccentricity eventually leads her superior, Agent Carter (Blair Underwood), to take her under his wing to unravel Longlegs’ long-dormant case.
There are little to no breadcrumbs to follow to capture the big baddie. Longlegs poses a conundrum that crime experts cannot decode. He only targets families with children; but here’s the catch—he always leaves Zodiac-esque letters full of ciphers, yet there never seems to be any evidence that he ever sets foot at the crime scene. Harker’s unique, almost unfathomable trait makes her a key figure in getting closer to the killer; at least, that’s what her superiors expect her to be. Read that last sentence again when you’ve unraveled the film’s mystery to see just how close is ‘close’.
Harker’s descent into the unexpected—the unpleasant work as her hyper-religious mother (Anna Dewitt) describes—is our gateway to the liminal world of Longlegs. This is a world that embraces the aesthetics of New Weird dearly and, mind you, it has everything that doesn’t normally fit together but is glued perfectly in Perkins’s deliberately crafted mise-en-scène. It’s part procedural crime set, part occult-ridden maze, and part paranormal activity with dolls and sudden bursts of brutal imagery. If you’re familiar with Remedy games like the Alan Wake series and Control, you’ll get that kind of aesthetic—that isn’t too strange to Perkins’s filmography.
I have some strange affinities with Perkins’s filmography—almost all of them are moody psycho-horrors that often test patience but aren’t always rewarding. Take The Blackcoat’s Daughter, for example (one of the most underrated horrors of the 2010s). The title hints at something, but the film never explicitly follows up on that allusion until very late. Instead, the writer-director takes the audience on a slow ride full of disorienting imagery and laconic narrative. Still, it put the filmmaker on the trajectory of ones-to-watch.
I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House doesn’t quite build on the foundation that Perkins established in his directorial debut. Some of the vaguest elements remain intact, but the cohesion never arrives. Hansel & Gretel sees the director’s return to form with a bigger budget and more familiar territory; but, it never suits his stylistic approach. Yet, they harbor similar themes in the grand scheme of things. There’s always a strange force driving people mad. Longlegsfits the style like a pair of gloves. This is the kind of film that encapsulates the director’s vision in all the necessities. It’s always the case of “the devil is in the details”—however you take the sentiment.
The Devil is in the Details
As in his other films, Longlegs is agonizingly slow in the build-up and harrowingly quiet even in its most grotesque moments. Perkins intends it to be abnormally atmospheric with moody tones that demand patience. It’s shrouded in mysteries and supposedly endless questions looming—and, man, it consistently goes all the way.
Neon’s marketing effort syncs perfectly with the film’s atmosphere. I remember when Neon posted a teaser video with only montages of old photographs accompanied by strange phone call recordings without meaningful context. What the teaser highlights is the atmosphere and the mystery itself. It’s a simple teaser, but it connects emotionally and psychologically with the audience—as if we’re sucked into the void that the film wants us to fill.
The film is no different. While we’ve seen how the titular killer looks albeit briefly, he hasn’t been present in the film for a large chunk of the duration; however, his ominous presence remains even when there’s no on-screen surrogate of the character. While it does not abstain from jump-scares, those shocking moments aren’t the film’s main source of fright. The real power Longlegs has over the audience lies in its ability to craft a constant feeling of disorientation and dissonance. And, there’s a sense of deliberation in Perkins’s craftsmanship to bring that out.
Often, the writer-director resorts to contrasting elements to present his vision, whether on the narrative level or the visual representation. Harker’s procedural crime plot represents the logic and her interaction with Carter provides a compass – that everything has to be logical before the law. Yet, Longlegs’ ominous presence which is sometimes incomprehensible challenges that belief almost immediately. Visually, the film complements the sentiment with contrasting imageries – a sudden montage of unrelated yet sinister photographs often flashing on the screen uninvitedly. On top of that, Perkins repeatedly captures moments against cramped yet meticulously designed backdrops with little to no movement. This kind of shot gives the disconcerting imagery that indicates something is off balance. It’s all designed in detail and deliberation.
The two main characters provide a perfect specimen for the contrast. Harker surrogates the audience’s mind as she gets thrown into the mud – knowing nothing and trying to connect dots based on a hunch. Monroe presents that sense of vulnerability with helpless eyes and curiosities that are borderline fearful. Longlegs, on the other hand, is the filmmaker’s surrogate — with eyes for details and acts that reeks of peculiarity. Cage owns the character and put Longlegs firmly into the cinema’s serial killer hall of fame almost immediately. Everything about his character is disturbing — from his look, and his mannerisms to his singing “Daddy! Mummy! Unmake me…” in the car. They linger on our minds longer than they should have been.
The ultimate contrast, however, is the film’s third act which acts as a lengthy exposition cum conclusion. For all the mysteries and peculiarities that Longlegs has built even since the promotional teasers, giving away an expose feels a little off – if not cheap. The film works like a fever dream and I wonder if it needs an explanation. On the surface, the creative decision behind it seems to be nullifying the idea in its entirety, yet, given the film’s deliberation, I choose to believe that serves a purpose. After all, it’s a solid entry from a director who, given the history with his family (son of the late Anthony Perkins), seems to be reconnecting with his generational trauma by recapturing the heydays of his parent’s legacy. It’s a real Americana work.
Verdict: Disconcerting and distressing in every turn, Longlegs slowly takes us to a moody serial-killer hunt — so bizarre it reeks of peculiarities like something’s always off. A solid entry to the weird cinema.
