I was not a fan of writer/director Osgood Perkins’ The Blackcoat’s Daughter or Gretel and Hansel. However, I decided to give this one a chance because the marketing was pretty effective, and it co-stars Nicolas Cage (whose appearance was absent and/or obscured in the promotional materials) as a creepy serial killer. While it’s marginally better than his other films, Longlegs remains a frustrating experience to say the least.
Maika Monroe (who looks like a bargain bin version of Brie Larson) is a “half-psychic” FBI agent trying to solve a rash of murders where seemingly average families up and kill each other. While on the case, she receives cryptogram messages from a killer named Longlegs (Cage) that brings her closer to unraveling the mystery. Does a traumatic incident from her past hold the key to cracking the case? What do you think?
Longlegs is one of those slow burn movies where nothing much happens for long periods of time and when it finally does, the jump scare is accompanied by an annoying music sting on the soundtrack. Sadly, that’s about the only maneuver in Perkins’ playbook. If you’re gonna pull a slow burn, you gotta make with the burn. Otherwise, all you get is SLOW.
It’s also overstuffed with half-baked ideas that never really work (like the inclusion of creepy killer dolls). At times, it seems like Perkins is just throwing ideas out to see what sticks. Sad to say, nothing ever does.
The most disappointing aspect of the movie is Cage himself. He kind of looks like Tiny Tim playing the Joker. That description sounds promising, but we ultimately see too much of him down the homestretch as his appearances were much more effective in small doses. Also, how can you take a world class hottie like Alicia Witt and turn her into a plain Jane nun? That’s probably the scariest part of the whole flick.
I thought this movie was pretty good overall.
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