Set during the Clinton presidency, “Longlegs” (2024) follows Special FBI Agent Lee Harper (Maika Monroe) who gets assigned to a series of cold cases involving family annihilators with a connection to a mysterious man (Nicholas Cage) who leaves letters signed Longlegs at the crime scenes. As she gets closer to finding Longlegs, she begins to question why she is so good at deciphering the clues. Is it supernatural or not? “Gretel & Hansel” (202) director Oz Perkins wrote and directed the film.
Maika Monroe delivers versatile performances in such films as “The Guest” (2014) and “It Follows” (2014), but some movies are just not good regardless of the quality of her acting: “The 5th Wave” (2016) and “Independence Day: Resurgence” (2016). In “Longlegs,” she goes against type by practically being expressionless except during calls to Lee’s mother, Ruth (an unrecognizable Alicia Witt), who is a bit of a hoarder and sounds like a religious nut. Lee prefers to devote her life to work, which is unfortunate because it is an unpleasant job that seems to disturb her as if she was one of the victims. When she brings her work home, it becomes literal. Lee spends most of the film with her gun in her hands and out of the holster regardless of the setting. Thanks to Monroe’s performance, despite Lee not being the kind of person that audiences root for, it is easy to get invested in her and wonder why she is so messed up. What made her decide to become an agent?
Much to the dismay of Agent Browning (Michelle Choi-Lee), who thinks that Lee is too green for such a messed-up case that damages more seasoned law enforcement, Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) places all his bets on Lee to solve the case. As buttoned up and serious as Lee is, Agent Carter is jocular and friendly enough for the two of them. He introduces her to his family: his wife, Anna (Carmel Amit), and daughter. Ruby (Ava Kelders). Even though Lee would prefer to keep a professional distance, she follows his lead in her taciturn, somber way. Lee is more obedient than a woman her age should be. Perhaps that emotionlessness is a sign of being entranced more than a somber agent?
Much ballyhoo has been bandied around about Cage’s physical transformation and performance. While he deserves points for not being instantly recognizable or chewing the scenery in his trademark way, the look is much ado about nothing although the wardrobe is pitch perfect counterintuitive for a bad guy: white and pale pinks, a vest among the multiple layers, etc. It is not exactly a shocker when a bad guy is extremely pale, either due to makeup or albinism, has feminine characteristics and sports strange features. No one will see this guy coming and want to invite him over for brunch, which is maybe what makes him scarier because he gets very close to people who must have no instincts to run the other way. As the titular character, Cage is disquieting in a way that creeps into the subconscious and will pop up at inopportune times when you are alone or cannot quite see around every corner, but that is also mostly due in part to Perkins’ direction by constantly cutting away before moviegoers can get a good look at him or leaving enough space empty around the characters that you may find yourself wondering when he will impossibly materialize to fill that area. Will Cage as Longlegs even break Cage’s top ten? Unlikely, but people seem to like this movie or maybe need to watch more of Cage’s earlier films.
While “Longlegs” explains everything in painful detail in the denouement, it may still feel unsatisfying. If you are looking for more than a creepy atmosphere, graphic violence and eerie subconscious imagery, which may be asking a lot for a summer movie, but not considering the set up. Along with “MaXXXine” (2024), Perkins’ film presents itself as another anticlimactic Satanic Panic movie which could be the point. Near the end, Agent Browning randomly says out of the blue, “He worships the devil. That’s for sure.” Is it? Afterwards, it becomes more apparent, but the statement feels like a non sequitur at that point. Perkins wants to have his cake and eat it too, but very few storytellers can pull off a stunt like that, and Perkins is not one of them. The narrative neither works as a tale about demented people who like to wreak havoc in seemingly perfect homes such as the referenced Manson family nor as a supernatural story where Satan can be blamed for everything. If the story was solely told from Lee’s point of view, then the events could be rationalized as an unreliable narrator so both could coexist, but the story is told from multiple points of view, so it never feels like Perkins crafted a cohesive narrative, but prioritized being evocative, which is disappointing and makes the whole movie feel like a waste of time.
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Is Lee psychic? How does Longlegs get power over people? “Longlegs” reveals a few solid details. The crimes go back as far as 1966 and involves girls who have birthdays on the 14th of the month. Lee’s biological father is never explicitly identified. Lee met Longlegs as a child, and she suppressed the memory either due to trauma or a side effect of seeing his face like an EMT pulse to the brain. His moniker refers to how he towers over children because of the height differential (“I have on my long legs”) then bends into the frame, which depicts the child’s point of view in an artificially stiff manner as if children do not have necks and cannot look up. That eye contact or even seeing a Polaroid of him is sufficient to act like an electric jolt to Lee’s body. Ruth, who was a nurse, made a deal with Longlegs so he would not kill Lee and became an accomplice then an enthusiastic Satan worshipper with Longlegs living in her basement where he could make dolls and presumably not have to earn a living. Lee does not remember anything, but probably called him “Mr. Downstairs” because on some level, she knew that he lived down there. In theory, the dolls play a role in the family annihilation. A black smoke comes from the doll’s head if they are shot, or at least, that is how Lee perceives it. Once the doll enters the intended victim’s house, the fathers are affected and kill their families. The mothers begin to act strangely. The dolls transfix the girls. No one ever mentions voodoo in the entire movie, and fans of “The Serpent and the Rainbow” (1988) wept and shook their fists impotently at everyone hailing this movie as the scariest movie—maybe on opposite day.
However, Agent Carter seemed to be acting strange throughout the entire movie. He was drinking and introduced some random woman to his family. It felt as if the entire family was under control, especially when the daughter randomly invites her to the birthday party. Plus Agent Carter was way too invested in Lee seeing her mother, which lends credence to the idea that Longlegs was controlling him, which leans towards a supernatural cause. I kept saying to myself, “Please don’t tell me that he ends up being the last victim.” And he was. Glowing eyes and knives shaped like ram horns are not enough to sell me on the devil connection. A predictable plot is not scary, Oz. Once it becomes clear that Lee is connected to Longlegs, the movie is not as suspenseful as the advertising claims.
I am normally excited to enter the filmmaker’s head and think about what they were going for, but I almost can’t be bothered. Almost! My theory is that people need a rationale regarding why they do bad things, but sometimes it is because they want to do bad things or to the extreme, are bad people so they need a scapegoat like the devil. Family annihilators are usually fathers and normally not devil worshippers though post-crime, people use allusions to the devil to reassure others that it cannot happen to them such as Emmanuel Carrere’s true crime book, “The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception.” Though it is a reach, Longlegs could be her father because as a child, she is the only potential victim who does not have a father.; however, Perkins presents it as if Longlegs met Ruth on the same day as her daughter. The foundation for the biological connection is the way that Lee, Ruth and Longlegs act behind the wheel-shared mannerisms.
The Satanic Panic era was also characterized by the idea of repressed memory and child abuse, which seems to be a factor here since Lee does not remember her childhood and clearly seems traumatized. If Ruth and Longlegs raised her, it explains why she is completely gone. At the end of the day, there was no Satan despite the panic though it would explain why Lee does not want to say her prayers. There is a black smoke that dissipates when Ruth shoots Lee’s doll, which suggests a supernatural reason. When Cage started talking about “Longlegs” in 2022, he called himself a demonic Gepetto so at most, I’m willing to concede that he has power over people, but Satan is a reach.
While visually, I loved that Ruth was dressed in an old-fashioned nurse uniform, which easily morphs and get confused with a nun’s habit to let future victims’ guard down, I never saw anyone in the nurse cape since the seventies to as late as the early eighties, so this wardrobe choice seemed like a stretch. As someone who lived through the nineties, absolutely no nurse still wore that uniform.
Also everyone is crowing about how Cage’s character feels like an homage to Perkins’ daddy, Anthony, who is most famous as the cross dressing killer in “Psycho” (1960), which was also referenced in “MaXXXine,” and I do not care. I’m going to need Oz and Joshua John Miller, the director of “The Exorcism” (2024) to stop referencing your dads’ work if it does not make the story better and is just an Easter egg for hardcore horror fans. Make a horror fan happy by making an entire movie that is worth watching on its own merits then you can make as many allusions as you want to the classics. I honestly do not believe that Perkins knows what happened in his own movie and just thought, “Good enough” instead of writing and revising a little more. Dear filmmakers, stick the landing! You’re only as good as your denouement.
