Longlegs: A new horror obsession is born
This is one that's going to stick with me for a while, a horror movie that lingers and unsettles well past the time when the screen goes dark.
Longlegs
Written and directed by Osgood Perkins
2024
Has anybody come up with a good way to define “elevated horror?” That’s the term that tends to be applied to horror movies that are a bit more on the artsy side, and a bit less trashy than your common slashers. But what exactly makes something fit into that subgenre? Is it an emphasis on building a cohesive atmosphere? Is it a focus on the emotions that the characters are experiencing as they deal with horrific events? Is it a somewhat more literary sensibility, with the potential for symbols and allusions for those who want to delve deeper into a film’s mysteries? Or is it just a way for film nerds to disassociate themselves from a genre that’s often seen as sleazy and gross?
I ask because while Longlegs seems to be the current favorite among people who love those sorts of movies (me included), it’s full of strikingly nasty violence, as well as some performances that could probably be referred to as “campy.” It features a crazy, over-the-top Nicolas Cage, who would be unrecognizable under a bunch of grotesque makeup if his voice and bodily movements weren’t so distinctive. Sure, it’s free from the marks of schlock horror, such as gratuitous nudity or excessive jump scares, but it wouldn’t take too much tweaking to make it fit alongside the likes of Smile.
But no, there’s something about it that seems to be more closely considered than a quick, cheap spookfest. It’s calculated to crawl right under your skin, building an atmosphere that’s unsettling, with a little bit of a “race against time” factor and a sense that something really bad is coming. And then it turns into a freaky violence-fest that leaves you shaken, wondering exactly what you just watched and what it all meant.
Part of what makes it work so well is a central performance from Maika Monroe, who is quickly turning into horror royalty due to her role in It Follows and a few other solid films (I’m partial to Significant Other, which was a nice monster-in-the-woods movie). She plays Lee Harker, an FBI agent who seems to have some sort of extrasensory abilities that may help her during serial killer investigations, which gets her assigned to a case involving multiple families who have died horribly over a period of several decades. She plays things mostly internally, giving her character a nervous, twitchy sensibility while also conveying her intelligence and her ability to put together clues in ways that nobody else has figured out. But at the same time, she seems kind of haunted, always looking over her shoulder and seeing things that might or might not be there. She grounds the movie as a fairly normal person who is trying to get to the bottom of the horrors she’s investigating, but there’s just enough oddness about her that the revelations that eventually come make sense.
The plot itself is just weird and specific enough to make you think that maybe it means something, but details surrounding the crimes could also be the ravings of a madman who has somehow managed to elude the authorities during a lengthy murder spree. There are a bunch of coded clues left at crime scenes that are reminiscent of the Zodiac killer, as well as some creepy dolls that start showing up and some intimations of potential Satanic rituals. I’m sure some people have deciphered the messages and attempted to build a coherent mythology out of everything that happens, but I think it works better as something that is never explained, something that could be attributed to a supernatural force but could also be an example of hypnosis or some other mass delusion that causes people to turn murderous.
Nicolas Cage’s performance fits well within this ambiguity. At first, we only see glimpses of him, a few moments in which he spouts crazy, menacing nonsense and gives us the idea that he might be stalking Lee and other victims. But as we see more of him, he’s a bit less scary and mostly just unsettling as he behaves in ways that are highly bizarre. If audiences are wondering how he’s managed to avoid suspicion when wandering around and acting crazy all the time, there’s a scene where he purchases some items from a hardware store and starts making some weird faces at the teenage girl behind the counter, but she just rolls her eyes and yells, “Dad, that gross weirdo is here again!” He’s apparently just odd enough to be written off as a local crank rather than a true menace. And even when he and Lee get to have a big showdown, he mostly just spouts a bunch of gibberish before doing something horrifying. It seems like Cage is deliberately making him too ridiculous to seem like a true threat, but still providing an undercurrent of tension, as if he could snap at any time and become the murder machine we expect him to be.
As striking and upsettingly weird as Cage is, the rest of the movie outdoes him as it builds layer upon layer of tension and freakiness. Other actors also turn in large, exaggerated performances, but they match the way the story works its way to a horrific crescendo. It’s all put together perfectly, dragging viewers through a series of awful moments before dropping us into a place we never expected and making us unsure about what to think. There’s little in the way of satisfying explanations, and we’re just left adrift, with no meaning to the horror we’ve just experienced and no sense that things are going to be okay. Perhaps that’s what makes this elevated horror: we don’t get to feel like the evil has been vanquished or that the monster has been driven away. It gives us the feeling that survivors of real-life horrors must experience, as if nothing is ever going to be right with the world again. If that’s not horror expressed to its fullest, I don’t know what is.