Daddies are killing their wives and daughters, and the elusive ‘Longlegs’ (Nicolas Cage) is somehow responsible. Slightly psychic FBI rookie Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is on the case, decoding Longlegs’ letters and her own past to find a killer who’s managed to do so without ever setting foot in his victims’ homes.
The comparisons to The Silence of the Lambs are inevitable but not baseless – largely personified by Monroe’s vulnerable yet competent FBI agent and the horrific crimes she investigates. Visually, it’s part Fincher, part Kubrick, with a baked-in supernatural element which gives the whole thing the feeling of a particularly unsettling X-Files episode.
What Longlegs has that others can only dream of is Nicolas Cage. Our man of constant reinvention, the star has become something of an indie darling during his most recent phase, turning in works of legitimate arthouse horror such as Mandy and Color out of Space. As the Manson-esque figure hiding at the film’s dark heart, Cage digs into his bag of tricks and delivers the precise kind of Nicolas Cage appropriate for the situation – and the film’s best jump scare too.
Director Osgood Perkins keeps his monster obscured just long enough to not turn the whole thing into The Nicolas Cage Show, cranking up the tension in anticipation of Longlegs’ brief but effective screen time. Meanwhile, Monroe compels as the young FBI agent, puncturing the the relentless bleakness of the subject matter with a surprising pinch of awkward humour. Alicia Witt and Kiernan Shipka bolster the uncanny atmosphere as Harker’s mother and a Longlegs survivor, respectively.
The killer’s own ties to Harker ensure she doesn’t have to work too hard for answers, but the film is more interested in building a pervasive sense of dread than in all the procedural footwork anyway. The scares are as surface-level as the 1990s setting and Cage’s caked-on makeup, but they’re certainly there, buried in a sustained, skin-crawling nightmare.
LONGLEGS is out in UK cinemas now.
