The Zodiac Killer. BTK. The “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez. And, Tiptoe Through the Tulips singer Tiny Tim.
On the floor, it could look like these items do not precisely swimsuit one another — the high-pitched crooning of a long-haired loner blended with a few of the most heinous acts of the previous half-century.
But it is that ping-ponging set of circumstances that Longlegs makes an attempt to caulk collectively: forcing a creeping story of delicate suspense alongside a typical over-the-top Nicolas Cage look. Though this time with Cage seemingly taking vocal — and costuming — inspiration from Tim himself.
It’s an audacious pairing, a recent and daring reinvention of the horror style that (if we’re to imagine the just about inescapably daring advertising and marketing) might have led to the scariest film of the year, decade and even the extra nebulous timeframe of “recent memory.”
So it’s a specific honour to report that, given that prime expectation, Longlegs triumphantly steps as much as the plate, calls its shot — then remembers we’re enjoying hockey.
WATCH | Longlegs trailer:
Because regardless of its spectacular performances, lovely cinematography and punctiliously crafted ambiance, Longlegs will get caught up in its personal cleverness, then wholly undercut by its big-name star. Any time it manages to construct up the mandatory feeling of the uncanny by which the style lives and dies, Cage smash-cuts in to undo it, in what seems to be a zany impression of Jason Alexander in Criminal Minds — hairdo and all.
Though an excellent callback to the suspenseful serial-killer mysteries of yore, Longlegs by no means fairly figures out what sport it is enjoying, or which objective it needs to fulfil. It juggles supernatural horror, neo-noir and onerous drama, and director Oz Perkins solely appears capable of succeed at a type of at a time — earlier than dropping all of them in a weird and disappointingly underwhelming shut.
But most egregious of all: It’s simply not scary.
Genre markers
That is to not say the horror is an outright failure. In reality, it is from it.
Set within the de-saturated, hazily nostalgic workplace buildings and townhouses of the Nineteen Nineties, Longlegs is at its coronary heart a psychological thriller, blended up with a police procedural: a mishmash of occult-obsessed The Omen with the crime method of Primal Fear. Focusing on any a type of pursuits in a vacuum, Longlegs does pretty effectively, and with all their entrenched style markers on full show.
We comply with FBI recruit Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), an keen however naive beginner with apparent parallels to Silence of the Lambs‘ Clarice, Sicario or — with an execution so related it is onerous to imagine it is a totally different actor — Shailene Woodley in To Catch a Killer.
The tropes do not finish there. Knocking on doorways of rural Oregon, Harker is quickly on the path of the eponymous Longlegs (Cage): a serial killer amalgam of all essentially the most horrible losers of the twentieth century. He invades households’ properties like Dennis Rader’s BTK, leaves coded, taunting messages for the police just like the Zodiac and, after all, professes an avowed love for Satan like Ramirez.
Heaped on prime of that true-crime smorgasbord is the supernatural. Brought onboard because of her mystical means to establish a killer’s house primarily based on dangerous vibes alone, Harker shortly proves to have some connection to the opposite aspect. Her unclear and largely ineffective energy simply helps her sometimes guess issues just like the quantity you have been pondering of, and largely exists to tie up the third act.
But that is all undergirded by the surprisingly highly effective household drama at Longlegs‘s core. Interspersing Harker’s investigation are frequent telephone calls house to her mom Ruth (Alicia Witt), whose frequent references to their shared previous do loads to ratchet up the strain.
Psycho’s son
It’s all the right method for writer-director Oz Perkins, the son of Psycho‘s titular psycho Anthony Perkins and a self-avowed hater of latest horror. Oz ostensibly makes use of Longlegs to deliver a way of awe and invention again into the style. It’s a noble pursuit, and one made evident by the Hitchcockian tone and Kubrick-inspired framing and set design.
But for somebody who’s also discreetly trashed different titles’ makes an attempt to inform the serial killer story as “very base,” it is astounding how little Perkins appears to grasp about depicting them himself.
Though he attracts from real-life serial killers, these inspirations themselves have been in some ways failures, whereas Longlegs is at all times formidable. In each the crafting and casting of his serial killer, Perkins punches a gap within the hull of his narrative, depicting Longlegs nearly as an excellent villain straight out of Batman’s rogues gallery.
Where the Zodiac’s taunts have been cracked by an aged couple and a warehouse operator, Longlegs’s esoteric, coded messages are solely cracked after the killer himself lends a hand — as a way to additional manipulate the police.
And the place BTK was caught as a result of he was too stupid to grasp how Microsoft metadata labored, Longlegs’s sport with the police is fastidiously crafted and managed.
And whereas Ramirez doubtless performed up his disjointed Satanism largely to feed his own narcissism, it was no less than by no means as instantly validated and bolstered as Longlegs offers its killer ultimately.
That final level is particularly egregious for a film filmed on location in British Columbia, the province the place the damaging and faux “Satanic Panic” global hysteria bought its begin. A “good” message is under no circumstances wanted to make an excellent film, however Cage’s frankly insane character selections go away little else for it to hold its hat on.
Because though Longlegs‘s slow-growing sense of dread makes it greater than price watching, Cage’s frequent feral screams repeatedly flip that worry into fodder for comedy — a mode that, in films designed for it, typically works in his favour. But this film’s cagey sport of cat-and-mouse doesn’t match that definition. Cage’s notorious “not-the-bees“-style line supply works effectively within the campy The Wicker Man, however including it to Old Yeller would simply lead to diminishing returns.
Shoving him in Longlegs is like if Jaws, as an alternative of retaining its large dangerous unknown and underwater, selected to have the shark soar out of the ocean each 10 minutes. Except right here, the shark is sporting a smile and a humorous hat.
So although Longlegs is entertaining and extra stable than not, it is hardly the scariest film of the yr. It’s largely a lesson in choosing a lane — and to Perkins, hopefully the lesson that had he swapped Nicolas Cage for Barry Keoghan, this would possibly’ve been the new Hereditary. Instead, it is The Snowman.
